Re: Financials web page - absolutely last call

[Eric Rescorla <ekr@rtfm.com>]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> writes:

> Check out http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/chair/financials.html
> 
> I have at last included the Foretec performance bonus, and think that
> this now shows a reasonable record of Foretec's financial activities
> on our behalf in 2001.
> 
> 
> If no great objections arrive, I'll tell the IETF that it exists.

Hmm.... This doesn't give me a very clear picture of what's going on.
There are (at least) a couple things that it seems worth knowing:

(1) The biggest single item is "food and beverages". I understand
    that this seems like kind of an undifferentiated category,
    but due to the size of the expense it seems like it would
    be worthwhile understanding where the money goes in some more
    detail (e.g., what events, how much to food, beverage, etc.)

(2) The second biggest single item is "Indirect expense". Your
    footnote says that it's decided as a percentage of Foretec's
    total operating expenses as determined by their expenditures.

    I'd like to understand this a little further. 

    (a) What were Foretec's overall "Indirect expenses" and
        what share of them are we carrying?

    (b) How do Foretec's "Indirect expenses" break down internally
        (i.e. HVAC, CPA, whatever)

    (c) If we bought caviar instead of cookies does this mean
        that since our overall expenses went up, our share of
        the indirect expenses would go up?

    Also, this seems to me to be a somewhat unusual arrangement.
    Ordinarily, service organizations either provide a fixed fee 
    service or provide hourly accounting with overhead built in
    to cover for matrixed  resources like rent, HVAC, networking,
    etc. Is there a reason we don't do things this way?

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr@rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/