Whether you're reimbursing a volunteer for their time, paying an invoice directly to a vendor or making a solidarity payment to someone in your community, the first step is for the person receiving the money to submit an expense. Open Collective's guide on how to do that is here. In order to make sure everything is compliant, we ask that you try to make sure the person receiving the money is the same person that submits the expense. If they need additional support to do that you can always get them to email us.
Click here for a video walking you through the process of submitting an expense.
People can select one of the above 3 options when requesting money from your page:
Paying expenses, settling invoices and making grants or solidarity payments
Whether you're reimbursing a volunteer for their time, paying an invoice directly to a vendor or making a solidarity payment to someone in your community, the first step is for the person receiving the money to submit an expense. Open Collective's guide on how to do that is here. In order to make sure everything is compliant, we ask that you try to make sure the person receiving the money is the same person that submits the expense. If they need additional support to do that you can always get them to email us.
Click here for a video walking you through the process of submitting an expense.
This function is useful for when your group has used a service and has received an invoice that needs to be paid.
Organisations and businesses can submit invoices directly to your page. It is very similar to the reimbursement function, however there is space to add in a PDF of the invoice onto the expense. Once they have done this it will come up as an expense that you can then approve on your collective's page.
If you prefer, you can create the invoice on their behalf and add their contact details so they receive an email to review it. They will then have a chance to make any amendments or add attachments before sending it back to you for final approval.
This function is often used by mutual aid groups and solidarity funds. Individuals can make grant requests to your page for any amount and submit this as an expense. This then goes through to the page admins to be approved in the same way as the reimbursement or invoice would.
When you set up your page one of the requirements is an Expenses Policy - this is where you can outline exactly what your group gives money out for, and if you are expecting to have individuals request grants this would be the place to outline the sort of grant requests your group would approve.
The grant request function also has a space to add in documents as an attachment, some mutual aid groups ask people to put in proof of address in this section. Your groups' Expenses Policy should outline exactly how you plan to use and distribute your funds.
Any of your collective admins can approve an expense. It's a very simple process, you can read more about it here. The only rule we have is that admins can't approve expenses that they have submitted themselves. If an admin needs to claim for an expense or invoice themselves, we ask that they get one of the other admins in the collective to hit the approve button for them.
If you want to make a payment or donation to another collective with an Open Collective page you can find out how to do that here.
When you submit an expense you naturally have to include some information about your identity as well as your bank details. If you follow all the instructions on the page this information should stay completely private and only be visible to the admin team, the person submitting the expense and us. Only the subject line (which gives an overall description of what the money is for) should be public. If the person making the claim makes a mistake with any of this, you can find out how to edit an expense here.
If you need to contact the person making the claim to ask to clarify something, you need more information or if you want them to edit the expense to remove personal information you can use the comments. These are private and only visible to the admins, the host and the person making the claim. You can find out more about expense claims here.
If you or someone in your group has already purchased something, such as flyers for an event you have hosted, then this option is the best option to transparently reimburse your costs.
On this feature you can add in the receipt of the items that have been purchased, add in the value and then use the expense to reimburse the person who made the original purchase.
It is a great way to transparently get your money back for things that have already been bought for your collective, and if someone has a number of receipts for things they have purchased, they can all be added to one expense - as long as they are all going to the same bank account.