Cap Software - External Contributors August 2021 #4850
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Few questions
Kindly please answer these questions, thanks!. |
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Thanks for the questions @Santhosh-Sellavel , I'll try to answer below but please feel free to ask more questions if you have any :)
Cap Software refers to "capitalized software costs" - I'm no accountant, but basically we're trying to keep track of the number of hours we work on different projects at Expensify. We do the same thing internally every month, in an internal repo.
Yes!
My understanding is that everything currently counts and should be tracked, as New Expensify technically still has not been "released" yet, so it's still "pre-launch". But I would like confirmation from @kortneywynn
Any project that was merged by you (and therefore completed) and qualifies based off of the mentioned "Criteria" - I assume all of these have
Take a project like the emoji picker for example. Before this went live, all PRs related to the picker were related to that project. After the picker went live, if someone was to work on a "significant enhancement" to the emoji picker like, for example, adding a GIF search / selector or adding multi-skin-colored emojis, this should be a "new project" since the initial launch of the emoji picker is in the past / already happened. Does this help?
That's a great question, I believe the answer is yes. @cead22 , @kortneywynn would y'all please double check my answers above? @Santhosh-Sellavel please ask more questions if anything is still not clear 👍 |
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@Beamanator Is it for all contributors or listed in the GH body? |
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Each month we'll make a new GH like this one, and only the contributors listed in the GH body need to fill out the spreadsheet for that month :) |
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@mananjadhav hmm it looks like you had at least 1 PR merged since Aug 1 (#4648) so I added you to this list, maybe our PR-searching technique isn't 100% accurate 😅 |
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Thanks for your answers, @Beamanator. Quite unclear about few more things,
Thanks! |
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Hi hi! I'm just going to jump in to clarify a few things. Sorry that we kind of rushed into this, but @Beamanator is doing a great job of answering most of these.
The reason we track this is that we get tax breaks for research & development.
This is not accurate. There could be several issues that would fall under the same "project". The criteria section in the description above should cover what is or isn't a project. If you have questions about what may or not be a project, please give specific examples and we can clarify further.
This is covered in the criteria section. Please read it carefully! New Expensify has already been "launched" (since Jan 2020), so bug fixes or regular maintenance don't count.
This is correct. We are looking for an estimate, and it would be better to be conservative (tend toward a lower amount of time).
Only stuff completed/merged in August count, yes.
Only projects completed before today please. If something merges between now and Sep 1, you can come back and update the spreadsheet.
Ideally, it's best to have this by Sep 1 so we can use it to close our financial books on time.
No, the instructions are to post projects here, and we will add the project to the spreadsheet for you. It's protected for specifically that purpose.
Project name. Thanks for learning this new process with us! |
I think all my issues will come under specific examples to get clarified 😂. But I'll list out and ask. |
There's some miscommunication here. The issue description is clearly stating that we should add rows in the excel document:
But we don't have access to do that: Wouldn't it be easier if we posted all our work for the month in a csv file or a table like this August Work Log
This way you can help us filter out non matching work, like "Please remove rows 3,4,5 as they fall into the bug fix category"
Then we edit our post and add another table (or csv) like: Projects
We repeat the process until we move everything from the "Work Log" to the "Projects" table This would allow you to select the rows above and paste them inside the excel, without having to grant access to others You can easily get a "csv" of you worklog for the month from Upwork
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Loved the suggestion from @kidroca but I am in a dilemma I never recorded my working hours. |
😄 Well you just post the "Projects" table then I also don't track time for "Fixed price" issues, so this is another thing that we need to discuss on how to guesstimate |
Welcome to the club @parasharrajat same here |
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@parasharrajat Maybe the merged PRs for the month can guide you: https://github.com/Expensify/App/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+author%3Aparasharrajat Another a bit more PTA approach is to browse these PR's go to the commits section and see how much time you've spent coding, it won't be correct of course but can give you a sense |
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Yeah. Thanks for the suggestion @kidroca. I would have to sit for a couple of minutes and estimate them based on a number of changes and change requests.
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I'm no accountant either, but I would assume that you're multiplying those hours by some rate to get the actual cost in USD for those tax forms and stuff. Since all of us here are fixed price contractors, why can't we directly list the amount of USD each issue/PR that qualifies as "research & development" was worth (before upwork cut of course)? It seems counter-productive for us to either guesstimate or calculate the hours using our average upwork rate or any other way to at least somewhat objectively get the amount of hours, when you will then multiply the hours to get the total cost anyway. Once again. No accountant. Have 0 knowledge about US tax system. Just curious why can't we do it the simple way. |
@tgolen sorry but the Criteria section is confusing to me. If it's already "launched" and bug fixes don't count why mention it at all
While if we're still in a "beta" state where the "New Expensify" app is not released to the general public, shouldn't every development work count towards the CAP quota |
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@dklymenk Raises a very good point - I was going to ask the very same thing You're posting the jobs on Upwork - you know which of them are RD or can be considered CAP |
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Ok, answering a few questions here (these are super helpful so keep them coming! We can review and update to make things clearer next month)
I think the Master Project List tab should be protected but you should be able to edit the monthly tabs. @Beamanator I think we need to update permissions, the entire linked sheet is view only. @kortneywynn do you have any advice on how contributors should be estimating time on their fixed-price contracts? Can we just use the full amount paid for a specific contract? |
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The monthly tabs should now be editable! |
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Team, |
My Contributions August@Beamanator, @tgolen here are the issues/projects, I'll leave the grouping as projects to you guys.
Waiting for input from @kortneywynn, to calculate/estimate hours, as asked here #4850 (comment) And also after grouping projects will sum up and updated total hours in sheet. Please let me know after updating the projects in the sheet, thanks! |
The end goal is total cost per project/issue/PR that qualifies as research and development. So if the ENTIRE issue/PR qualifies as development, meaning it has not been yet launched, then this is fine. But if the project/issue/PR encompasses both development and post-launch maintenance work, then each contractor would need to split their hours/cost to reflect this. |
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Thanks for your reply. This tax Really glad you pointed out that it's the cost that matters, so we can just put values in USD in the spreadsheet and call it a day without guessing how many hours it took. Did I get this one right? Anyway, I have only 3 PRs merged this month: https://github.com/Expensify/App/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+author%3Adklymenk+merged%3A%3E%3D2021-08-01 #4799 - the wording on the original issue sounds like it's a bug, unless adding missing feature of an already deployed feature is not bugfix, but research and development So if my interpretation is correct, that means I am free from this report for now. Please let me know if any of my conclusions are wrong. I will still follow the discussion to better understand how this works, since next month we are going to have to do the exact same thing. Thanks. |
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For the month of August, I've primarily worked on Bugs/Issues only except for one which is an enhancement. I am guessing all those will have to be excluded. I am not sure if the following enhancement is also covered, putting it anyway.
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@tgolen @Beamanator I am wondering if it would be best if someone from Expensify who created this issue can help us determine whether it was applicable to phase 2-4 first. Then each month, the external contributors can just list their issues and hours/cost and we can allocate it that way? Is this possible? This may be better than having the contractors guess whether the issue is related to a launch feature or not. |
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@tgolen, @Beamanator, @arielgreen Whoops! This issue is 2 days overdue. Let's get this updated quick! |
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OK, just catching up here. I think there are a number of things which could make this more simple and I really appreciate all the feedback! Let's pause on this for now while we have an internal discussion about the end goal here. |
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Going to close this out for now per our internal discussion -- thanks for your engagement and questions, folks! |
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To add a little more context... these are the things that came up:
So, thanks for bearing with us while we figure this out and see you sometime in the future! 👋 |
Beamanator
changed the title
Beamanator
changed the title
Hello and welcome to this month's edition of CAP software for external contributors.
What I need from you:
Criteria
Qualifying projects generally include building new products, features and processes or making significant improvements to existing products, features and processes.
The following work should be captured for the purpose of CAP Software:
Development, testing, general feature launch.
The actual building and development, beta testing and launch of the product that happens after research and design has been completed, up until the product is released for general use and the GitHub issues are closed.
This includes code development and reviews, pre-launch bug fixing , beta testing, and customer/data migration.
It does not include enhancements past the initial launch, general maintenance, product launch activities (change announcements, help guides) or customer support.
If there are significant product enhancements past the initial launch, they should be captured as a new project.
Triggered auto assignment to @arielgreen
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