Governance

• 1: Customer Relations Management
• 2: IT
• 2.1: Tech stack
• 3: Finance
• 3.1: Payroll

1 - Customer Relations Management

At Balean, we use GitLab to manage organisations and contacts in GitLab’s CRM. This CRM is basic and simple but also part of the toolset we are already using. Matching our policy to use existing tools as much as possible, GitLab is the tool of choice for now, until we need something more sophisticated.

CRM Setup

The setup is very simple. Organisations and contacts are managed at group level in GitLab’s CRM so there is one group for Balean and one group for SBSC to be used as the CRM. For both these groups, the CRM featured is enabled in the group settings.

Opportunities are then created as issues in a project underneath those CRM groups: sales for SBSC and partners for Balean.

Organisation details are added in an epic per organisation.

Add new organisation

Organisations are not just added as a customer relation in GitLab, but also as an Epic in order to be able to store contract information and status information for the customer. The organisation as a customer relation only holds very limited information.

To add a new organisation, go to the group in GitLab that contains the CRM. Then navigate to Plan --> Customer relations in the sidebar.

Once in the customer relations, click on Organizations in the top right, just above the search bar. Now you can click on the New organization button. Fill in the fields for the organization and add it.

Once the organisation is added, also create an Epic in the same group as where Customer relations are enabled. Navigate to Plan --> Epics and click on New Epic. Use the organization name, prefixed with Organization: as the name of the Epic.

In the epic you can add links to:

1. Links to contracts, NDA’s and other documents
2. Important agreements with a customer
3. Customer status (as labels)
4. Status of negotiations
5. Other information important to store for a customer

Add contacts to an organization

To add contacts, make sure to navigate to the Customer relations section (See above under Add new organisation).

When you are in the Contacts section, you can click the button New contact just above the search bar, otherwise, click on Contacts first. Then fill in the details for the contact and add it.

Add contact to an issue

At the moment, you can not add contacts to issues via the UI. You can only do this via QuickActions.

To add a contact, go to an issue underneath the group that has customer relations enabled. On the issue add a new comment with the following text:

/add_contacts [contact:address@example.com]

Be careful to remove any spaces at the start of the line!

Post the comment and the contact will be added to the issue.

Please not the following limitations:

1. You cannot add contacts to epics, only to issues.
2. You cannot add organisations to epics or issues, just contacts.
3. All customers are also added to our bookkeeping software so no need to store addresses and such in GitLab unless it is information that is important or convenient to (also) store in GitLab.

2 - IT

2.1 - Tech stack

Office applications

Development

3 - Finance

The task of finance is to handle all financial transaction, tax payments as well as payments to employees, interns and volunteers.

Find all procedures and policies around finance in this section of the handbook.

Bookkeeping

For bookkeeping, we use e-boekhouden.nl. Documentation on how to use the application, how to book certain invoices or documents and what bookkeeping accounts are in use, can be found in our Drive.

Also, the bookkeeping accounts used for payrolling are listed in this document.

3.1 - Payroll

Volunteers

The Balean Foundation cannot exist with our valuable volunteers! Although volunteers typically do work for an organisation for free, their are circumstances in which a volunteer can still receive money to reimburse for any expenses or as an allowance for the work they do for the organisation.

Balean is non-profit and 100% dependable on donations. We try to keep our cost as low as possible so we can spend as much as possible on scaling the platform. Therefore, we can only pay an allowance and expenses in certain circumstances and maximized to what is allowed by the Dutch law. You can send an email to volunteer at balean dot org if you want to know more.

As a volunteer, please also read our community handbook for more information about our volunteering program and our code of conduct.

Volunteering allowance and expenses

Volunteers can get a monthly allowance under certain circumstances, as well as reimbursements of cost they made. The total amount received per hour, month and year are limited by Dutch law. See the Dutch tax services website for detailed information. Balean will not pay out more than the maximum amount allowed by the Dutch government to any volunteer, even if local rules are different.

It is important to note that one person can only receive a maximum amount of volunteering allowance for ALL volunteering work they do. If you do volunteering work for more than one organisation, it is the responsibility of the volunteer to keep proper administration and add these amounts to income tax applications. Please check the above link of the Dutch tax service or check with your local tax services.

Please note that these rules apply for everyone who files income tax returns in the Netherlands. If you live in another country other rules and laws may apply. Verify with local tax services for the local rules.

Volunteering allowance receipt

If you want to receive an overview of allowances paid to you, please send an email to volunteer at balean dot org.

Employees and interns

New employee

New employees that are paid a salary or allowance and that will receive a payslip, need to be registered with our payroll office.

In order to collect all necessary information, each employee need to fill in an employeeform (Werknemersformulier). New employees will get the link to this form before the first day of employment. As part of the form, employees need to upload a valid copy of their photo ID.

Every employee is also required to fill in a ‘statement of data for payroll taxes’ or ‘payroll tax statement’ (Loonbelastingverklaring). The template for this document can be downloaded from the website of the Dutch tax services.

Payroll payments and payslip

All payroll payments are made around the 24th of each month. Around that time, the payslip will become available as well.

For payslips, we use Nmbrs. Nmbrs also has a mobile app, which can be downloaded from the Nmbrs website or app stores.

It is the employee responsibility to read and verify the payslip on errors. If you see any error or issue, report this immediately to finance at sbsc dot nl.

Balean internal procedures

Bookkeeping of volunteering allowance

Volunteering allowances are booked under a specific bookkeeping account. To distinguish between volunteers, a cost centre is created for every volunteer who receives an allowance. Allowances paid need to be booked against that cost centre.

NOTE in order to make it easier to generate a receipt, use the exact name that needs to show on the receipt as the name of the cost centre.

When an allowances overview is requested, an export needs to be made of the specific cost centre and send to the volunteer as a PDF with Balean layout and signature.

Creating a volunteering allowance receipt

If a volunteer requests a volunteering allowance receipt, then follow the steps below to create a PDF. Send the PDF to the volunteer in question via email.

1. Login to e-boekhouden for the Balean Foundation
2. Go to cost centres and select the function per cost centre.
3. Select the year for which you want to generate a receipt and the cost centre of the volunteer.
4. Click continue to load the amounts paid and then click on csv to download the payments.
5. Use the volunteering allowance template sheet (internal only) to create the receipt.
   1. On the tab cost centre export, click on file -> import.
   2. Under Upload select the local csv file that you downloaded from e-boekhouden.
   3. For Import location select Replace current sheet.
   4. Click Import data.
   5. Go to the tab Receipt and check the data.
   6. Export the PDF via File -> Download -> PDF
   7. Make sure to set the following options when exporting:
      • Paper size: A4
      • Page orientation: Portrait
      • Margins: Wide
      • Formatting: Disable Show gridlines and Show notes

Registering a new employee for payrolling

In order to process payroll for new employees, the following tasks must have been executed:

1. Send an email to the new employee, asking them to fill in the employeeform.
   1. Employeeform (Internal Drive link).
2. After receiving the employeeform, prefill the payroll tax statement and the payroll office employee form (Aanmeldingsformulier werknemer of PH&A) with the employee data and send them via email for a signature. The payroll tax statement is already a PDF that you can fill in and save as PDF. The payroll office employee registration form is a spreadsheet that needs to be saved as PDF for the employee to sign. In both cases the employee need to sign for the choice to have payroll tax reduction applied or not.
   1. Statement of data for payroll taxes form
   2. PH&A specific ‘Aanmeldingsformulier werknemer’ (internal link)
3. Send an email to PH&A Salaris via info at phasalaris dot nl with the following documents:
   1. Signed copy of the PH&A specific ‘Aanmeldingsformulier werknemer’
   2. Signed copy of the payroll tax statement form
   3. Copy of photo ID of the employee

Payroll bookkeeping

Each month, the following tasks must be reviewed:

1. Pay the net salary that is listed on the employee payslip
2. Make the payslip available to the employee via Nmbrs
3. When the payroll tax is calculated and made available by the payroll office, pay the tax via Nmbrs
4. Book the following in the bookkeeping software:
   1. Net salary paid via bank - use the payslip as bookkeeping proof
   2. Payroll tax paid via bank - use the payroll tax document as bookkeeping proof
   3. Post payroll journal entries from the journal entries overview in Nmbrs - Use the journal entries PDF export as bookkeeping proof for the entry