The "Board of Directors approval for 90 days late" rule was originally
instituted to make it clear that reimbursements beyond 90 days were
really difficult for Conservancy to process. In practice, the rule has
meant that travelers simply believe that they "have another out" if they
are late, and late reimbursement requests put an undue burden on
Conservancy staff for special processing, and they create extra work for
our volunteer Board of Directors.
As such, Conservancy now simply rejects reimbursement requests that are
received 90 days or more after the last day of travel.
In a conversation with our bankers, they told me that many non-USA banks
have correspondent banks in the USA they prefer to work with and it can
avoid fees.
In the "Easy Reference Guide", it had been noted that you must include "Your
fare search (i.e., a screen shot)" when submitting a reimbursement request.
However, the main body of the text didn't explicitly say that.
I've also reintroduced herein a list of fare search sites. We took out the
list initially because some complained that it prescribed a specific search
site. The new wording herein makes it clear that the list is a proper subset
of acceptable search sites. More can be added if folks like.
PayPal can handle mulitple currencies now. Therefore, we should collect
preferred currency ifnormation from the traveler, thus avoiding additional
round-trips to verify what currency they seek reimbursement.
Link to the list on PayPal's website of what currencies they support: some
travelers in the past have requested currencies via PayPal that it turned out
PayPal didn't support.
The receipt for hotel rooms must clearly show the dates of travel, so
Conservancy can verify that the dates of the stay matches the dates of the
event attended, and also to verify that no food or service charges were
included, since food and service charges go against the ME&I per diem charges
rather than the hotel room charges.
Based on advice from Conservancy's Treasurer, Conservancy will not require
that conference-provided food be formally accounted for in per diem
reports. However, travelers should consider these issues when submitting,
and be honest about what they actually spent on food, rather than seeking
the maximum per diem allowed.
Based on discussion with Conservancy's Treasurer, I reworked this section
to clearly state that Conservancy can approve higher rates for hotels, but
that such approval should be done before travel begins. I also cut down
some of the extra detail in this section that I think is obvious (i.e.,
how to use the GSA website).
I believe it is important to be very specific about reimbursement for
travel as this is probably one of the moret common forms of financial
transactions in many projects. It would be unfortunate if PLC members
were made ineligible (or unduly burdened) in requesting travel funding
on an equal footing with other project members.
We've explicitly stated now that legitimate reimbursements are not
compensation.
