Expenses

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Overview

As part of your job you’re likely to incur costs on behalf of Volkis. We try and make it easy to get those costs reimbursed.

Expenses, by default, are paid to the same bank account as your salary. If you’d like it paid into a different account, please let the payroll officer know.

Spending Volkis money

It is perfectly okay for employees to spend company money when it is related to their duties. As a general rule, treat Volkis money like it was your own. That means, spend what is needed, but avoid overindulging. You don’t have to stay at the cheapest hotels, but the Ritz-Carlton is probably a bit much.

If in doubt, ask your manager. 🙂

Submitting an expense

We use Xero Expenses for submitting, filing, approving, and paying expenses. You can use the Xero Expenses app to upload expense claims:

When you started employment you should have been invited to your personal Xero account. This is used for payroll and expenses and the account you should use to login to Xero Expenses as well.

The Xero instructions for submitting an expense can be found here: https://central.xero.com/s/article/Create-a-new-expense

Expense categories

This section contains a list of categories and when to use them. It’s important to get the right categories - the categories can have tax or accounting implications. If you’re in doubt about what category to use ask your manager.

Staff Amenities

  • Morning/afternoon tea for employees
  • Coffees and snacks
  • Not appropriate for:
    • Lunches and dinners (should be “Entertainment”, “Travel - National/International”)
    • Food for non-employees (should be “Client Meetings and Events” or “Entertainment”)
    • Training food (should be “Training”)

Client Meetings and Events

  • Food, coffees for meetings and events with clients
  • Additional costs such as booking fees

Marketing and Advertising

  • Advertising fees including online advertising
  • Sponsorships for conferences
  • Graphics design and consultants for marketing

Bank Fees

  • Annual fees for bank accounts and credit cards
  • Payment transaction fees

Consulting & Accounting

  • Accounting expenses
  • Xero fees

Entertainment

  • Lunches, dinners, alcohol expenditure
  • Costs for internal non-training events (including dinners after presentation days)
  • Not appropriate for:
    • Food during training, including while travelling to conferences and presentation day (Should be “Training”)
    • Food during travel for client engagements (Should be in “Service Delivery Expenses”)

Freight & Courier

  • Costs for sending packages between Volkis employees
  • Not appropriate for:
    • Delivery costs for laptops, hardware, training materials (Should go in “Information Technology Expense” or “Training”)
    • Sending packages to clients such as the delivery of a jump box (Should go in “Service Delivery Expenses”)

General Expenses

  • Anything not attributable to other categories
  • Not appropriate for:
    • IT infrastructure, laptop adapter costs (Should be in “Information Technology Expense”)
    • Food, travel, and accommodation to client sites (Should be in “Service Delivery Expense”)
    • Alcohol purchases (Should be in “Entertainment”)
    • Food, tolls, travel, accommodation for attending conferences, training courses, and presentation days (Should be in “Training”)

Insurance

  • Professional indemnity, cyber risk, WH&S insurances

Legal expenses

  • Lawyer fees

Light, Power, Heating

  • Utilities for home office
  • Currently only to be used by Matt

Information Technology Expense

  • Fees for Pipedrive, Xero, Qwilr, AWS, infrastructure costs
  • Hardware expenses for laptops and workstations
  • Costs for servicing laptops, IT infrastructure

Office Expenses

  • Internet, phone, and utilities for home office
  • Currently only to be used by Matt

Printing & Stationary

  • Printing of business cards

Rent

  • Rent for home office
  • Currently only to be used by Matt

Training

  • Fees for conferences and training courses
  • Travel, accommodation, and food for attending conferences and training courses (including Presentation Days)
  • Online training costs
  • Software and hardware costs for the purpose of learning
  • Professional certifications
  • Ongoing membership fees for societies such as AISA, ISACA, ISC2, etc.
  • Not appropriate for:
    • Costs directly attributable to a single project, for instance an online training package to learn the software that is in scope for a penetration test

Telephone & Internet

  • Expensible phone plan costs
  • Expensible internet costs

Travel - National

  • National travel for meeting partners, clients, personnel, etc.
  • Not appropriate for:
    • Travel for attending conferences, training courses, or presentation days (Should be in “Training”)
    • Travel for client work (Should be in “Service Delivery Expenses”)

Travel - International

  • International travel for meeting partners, clients, personnel, etc

Service Delivery Expenses

  • Travel, food, and accommodation for the delivery of services for a client project
  • Software purchases for a single project/client (for instance Dehashed or similar)
  • Hardware purchases for a single project/client (for instance USBs for a USB drop)

Expenses incurred on a company credit or debit card

For those who have a company credit or debit card, expensing works in exactly the same way. When putting through the expense, however, add the “Company credit card” label to the expense so that we know it should be paid to the credit card account rather than the personal bank account.

Expenses as part of service delivery

When you’re using the Service Delivery Expenses category, you should add the Project ID (e.g. AC-220405) into the expense description. This will help allocate an expense to a specific project.