Hey Andrew,

On December 6, 2016 at 3:41 AM Andrew Ward <award3535@tds.net> wrote:

Ambassadors,

The PayPal issue I could see posing a problem for other countries, but as Treasurer for NA, the idea of paying in advance does not work in NA.
For example we pay for flight and room in advance, then the individual that does not show up to the event or the room incurs more charges than authorized
it exceeds the approved budget amount.

I see. However, does this happen quite often in NA?

I'm personally not in favour of dismissing the idea of advance payments, just because there have been some unfortunate cases in the past.

This has happened in NA, so in order to protect the organization and only with case by case situations and voted on by NA Ambassadors do we pay in advance.

This could work very well.

PayPal has worked just fine in NA.
For those individuals that have attended events that we pay for (Fedora pays) they have some basic requirements that must be met before receiving reimbursements and is listed
on event planning/participation guides. There have been some problems in the past getting reimbursed but hopefully I have fixed that process. I usually get reimbursements to individuals
who complete the basic requirements within a few days of the Trac ticket/Pagure reimbursement request.

As for the problems with how reimbursements get handled that is why we have the Treasurer, Logistics, and a story teller to fix the loop holes. If you remember Decause and the council
set that up. So far since I hold both Treasurer and Storyteller, things have run smoothly. I cant answer for other regions on how they conduct business, but my suggestion is that each
region take a close look on how you do conduct business.

Unfortunately, I did not have a good overview of how things get done in NA. On average, how many community sponsorship requests do you handle per month?

Thank you Andrew and everyone else for your input.
-Giannis