Spending money

There are many occasions when you will need to spend company money. PostHog is a lean organization - the less we spend, the more time we have to make sure the company takes off. However, it is more important you are productive, healthy, and happy.

Guiding principles

We have a context-based expense policy inspired by the book 'No Rules Rules'. We're empowering team members to make good decisions while maintaining transparency and accountability.

Ask yourself:

  • Can you clearly explain why this expense is in PostHog's best interest?
  • Would you be comfortable explaining this expense to the entire team publicly?

If the answer is yes, it is likely the expense is in the best interest of the company and supports your productivity.

If not, think again.

The goal here is to empower you. However, when in doubt, ask your team lead for context, not permission.

How it works

  • All company expenses (offsites, software/tool subscriptions, merch, etc.) will have common company-wide budgets.
  • You'll be assigned a single User Limit of $5,000 per month in Brex from which you can spend money on individual subscriptions, coworking/collaboration, equipment (except laptops and Mac Studio Monitors - ping #team-people-and-ops for these), training, etc. If you need an increase in the limit, request it on Brex.

Transparency & accountability

  • All expenses are visible company-wide
  • If we have questions about an expense or need documentation, we'll reach out for clarification
  • Team leads get monthly reports showing all direct report expenses

Logistics

UK employees

Use your Revolut if the expense is over £75 and has UK VAT on it. If not, use your Brex.

The company can claim back VAT on these larger purchases - the more money we claim back, the more money we have to #DoMoreWeird

Please make sure that the invoice is addressed to Hiberly Ltd and our registered address (this can be found in the Important Company Details sheet).

Receipts

All expenses over $75 or £75 must have itemized receipts attached and memo updated within 14 days of the charge, as this is what our auditors require.

In extreme cases, expenses with no receipts above $75 or £75 may be deducted from your pay if we can't verify the business purpose - this is mainly for repeat offenders where someone's clearly ignoring the policy.

We need an itemized receipt or invoices because Brex auto-verifies these using the information on the file. For example, this means the full booking confirmation email for flights/hotels, detailed bill from the restaurant for a team dinner etc. Please do not upload cropped images that show just the amount or just the credit card machine confirmation slip - without context, the receipt is pointless

Template for a thorough memo

  • What: [item/service purchased]
  • Why: [business reason - how this helps PostHog/your work]
  • Context: [relevant details - who attended, what project, etc.]

Reviewing expenses

Finance reviews:

  • All expenses over $1000 (Brex)
  • Random sampling of expenses under $1000 (Brex)
  • All Revolut expenses

Team Leads

You'll get monthly expense reports for your direct reports. You have context Finance doesn't, which will help justify spending decisions to the auditors. How much you dig into these is up to you - the goal is catching patterns, not micromanaging.

Why documentation matters

Missing receipts and memos create extra work during audit season - auditors will need to dig into those expenses, which means hours of back-and-forth with you about charges from several months ago! A quick receipt upload and memo update now saves everyone time later.

We're legally prohibited from paying personal expenses on behalf of team member, and are at risk of penalties/fines if this happens.

The flexible, trust-based policy we have only works when everyone maintains proper documentation. If team members consistently fail to upload receipts and add memos, we'll either need to implement rigid pre-approvals for all spending, or treat repeated violations as performance management issues. Which we really don't want to do!

Budget structure on Brex

We're not going to police your spending with hard limits but we will continue to use budgets and limits on Brex for audits, and because categorizing this stuff properly is essential for things like Board reporting, tax compliance, and seeing how we're doing against our budget.

  • Offsite budgets - managed by Kendal:
    • Whole company offsite
    • Mixed team offsites
    • Small team offsites
    • Onboardings
  • Company software budget
    • All subscriptions/tools used at a company level - (Janani should be default admin for all of these, so she can handle receipts etc.
  • User Limit of $5,000 per month, per user
    • This covers all co-working/collaboration costs, training, individual software subscription, etc.
    • For subscriptions and other recurring monthly expenses, we recommend using the virtual card under your User Limit to ensure it gets categorized to the correct budget by default

Joining an offsite? Only use the offsite budget, not your User Limit - it helps the People & Ops track travel spend accurately against budgets. Let Kendal know in #team-people-and-ops.

Frequently asked questions 🤨

  • Can I use my personal card for a work-related expense?
    • No, you must use your Brex or Revolut for all work-related expenses.
    • The company earns points which we use towards billboard campaigns. The Finance team also doesn't have the bandwidth to process lots of reimbursement requests.
  • What if I accidentally used my personal card for a work-related expense?
    • Claim a reimbursement with an itemized receipt on Brex within 90 days of incurring the expense, with a memo (context on what was the expense for and why your Brex wasn't used).
    • We cannot process any reimbursements without a receipt.
  • Can I use my Brex/Revolut for a personal expense?
    • Obviously not.
  • What happens if I forgot to assign the right spend limit before using Brex?
  • Can I bulk upload receipts to Brex?
  • What do I do if I have a new tool/enterprise software subscription for the team to use?
    • Add Janani as the Billing Admin to manage payments.
  • If I'm asked for a billing email for bill payments, what do I use?
  • What if I'm driving for work-related purposes?
    • You can claim a mileage reimbursement through Brex. Do not separately expense fuel.
  • What if I accidentally used the company card for a personal expense?
  • How do I get access to WeWork?
  • What if I've received a bill I need Finance to pay?
    • Submit the bill using the 'Bill Pay' feature on Brex, with context on what it is for, and which budget the bill should be coming out of, once you have verified it.
    • Finance processes all bill payments on Wednesdays.
  • How do I upgrade my flight ticket to premium or business using my personal points/card?
    • Book an economy ticket using your Brex, then upgrade afterwards using your personal points/card.
    • If you can only book premium travel using personal miles or points/card then request a reimbursement for the cost of the economy fare in Brex, along with a screenshot of the cost of the economy fare at the time of booking.

How we handle inappropriate spending

Expenses that could be construed as personal will be flagged as non-business expenses by auditors, as they will be considered a taxable benefit that PostHog has provided to you.

Examples of inappropriate spend include:

  • Personal expenses during business travel (for example: gym sessions/fitness classes, groceries)
  • Entertainment subscriptions for personal use (for example: Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.)
  • Expenses that benefit you personally rather than the business
  • Anything you wouldn't feel comfortable explaining publicly

If the inappropriate spend was due to a misunderstanding, e.g. you genuinely thought an expense was in PostHog’s best interest, but we disagree, we’ll provide clarification and context. If you knowingly and deliberately spent money in ways that are not in PostHog’s best interest, or tried to intentionally circumvent the guidelines, we will probably treat this as serious misconduct.

Expense guidelines

Equipment

Laptop & monitor

Talk to Tara who handles most Macbook and Apple Studio Display purchases - ping her on #team-people-and-ops.

  • Having equipment purchases centralized helps ensure accurate accounting and tracking of fixed assets for the audit.
  • We expect you to ship the Macbook and Apple Studio Display back when you leave PostHog.
  • Apple Studio Displays are only for Product Engineers (high density screen) and Sales/CS/Onboarding teams (built-in high quality webcam and microphone). If this isn't you, we recommend this screen from LG as a high quality but reasonably-priced alternative.
    • If you order a Studio Display during your probation period but end up leaving PostHog, we can recover the cost of the display and you won't need to return it.
  • Laptop guidelines
    • For engineering roles (product, platform, & support), we recommend a Macbook Pro 14-inch M4 Pro, with the 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU upgrade and 48GB of RAM. We recommend the 1TB SSD drive in order to make sure you have enough space to run the full stack locally.
    • For sales & CS roles, we recommend a Macbook Pro 14-inch M4, with 10-core GPU, 16-core and the 32GB RAM upgrade. Again, grab the smallest SSD (512gb)
    • All other roles, we currently recommend a Macbook Air with the latest Apple Silicon processor and 16GB of RAM.
    • Apple offers multiple screen sizes. The larger screen sizes (15 inches +), are disproportionately more expensive. If you are realistically going to do most of your work at home, it is more rational to pick a smaller laptop size, and to get a large monitor.
    • We only purchase laptops with an English keyboard configuration (US, International or British is fine) - this enables us to easily pass your laptop on to someone else if you upgrade or leave.
    • In the unlikely case that you need to purchase your own laptop:
      • Check if Amazon has sales before purchasing through Apple
      • US only: use your Brex since we earn cashback
      • UK only: use your Revolut since we claim back the VAT
      • Do not get AppleCare since it doesn't have great value for money
    • You can request a new laptop in #team-people-and-ops if it is over 4 years old or significantly impacting your productivity. We do ask that you do some diligence to make sure it's not a setup issue though - i.e. other applications aren't hogging the memory, etc.
    • Part of #team-client-libraries and need to purchase a phone for testing? Talk to Tara in #team-people-and-ops.

Yubikey

We enforce the use of hardware security keys wherever we can. Every team member needs two Yubikeys. You can find them on Amazon, and can read more about how to get set up on the MFA page.

Other equipment

  • Keyboard/mouse/laptop stand: Check Amazon and Apple for discounts. Refurbished items usually work just fine. Nextstand make great value laptop stands that are portable.
  • Desk & chair - again, refurbished is usually. If you live in the UK, Office Resale offer a range of like-new refurbished designer furniture.

Software

We are strongly opposed to introducing new software that is designed for collaboration by default. There needs to be a very significant upside to introducing a new piece of software to outweigh its cost.

The cost of introducing new collaborative software is that it creates another place where todo items/comments/communication can exist. This creates a disproportionate amount of complexity.

Individual software is down to your personal preference, and we encourage you to share cool software.

  • There are some tools used by team members individually - if they become more widely adopted, it makes sense to have a company account. Talk to Tara on #team-people-and-ops
  • Ask for access in #team-people-and-ops to get access to:
    • Loom: you'll be added as a Creator Lite which allows you to record 25 videos/mo at up to 5 minutes in length. If you need a full Creator account (unlimited videos, advanced features), ask Simon.
    • Zoom: we use Google Meet by default, but you can use Zoom for free (up to 40-minute calls). Should you need longer meetings, ask Simon. (But does anyone really need longer meetings?)
    • Superhuman: everyone has their own favorite email app, but Superhuman users will make sure you don’t forget theirs. We have a team plan to keep those folks happy with inbox zero and inner peace.
    • Granola: It’s absolutely okay to use AI note-takers so you can stay engaged in meetings without writing everything down. Feel free to choose your own but please be aware of who the sub-processors are to ensure they do not use a competitor for analytics.
  • IDEs: Visual Studio, VIM and PyCharm are the most popular within our team. IDEs range widely in cost; best in class IDE suites can cost up to $700, which is not a great value proposition for most engineers.

Travel

  • We travel in economy by default and do not pay for business class
    • If you're unsure of your travel plans and believe you may have to cancel, it may be worth spending a bit extra to book flex tickets that allow a full refund to your Brex
    • It may be worth occasionally upgrading to Premium Economy if you're travelling a lot for work and the cost is not unreasonably high, particularly if you're working the next day
  • Consider signing up for programs like Global Entry if you are regularly traveling to countries that offer it, using your Brex; this saves you time, particularly when traveling to the US.
  • When traveling internationally, use your Brex to expense a reasonable eSIM. PostHog does not cover roaming charges for your phone.
  • When using your Brex internationally, use the local currency since Brex generally offers a better exchange rate.
  • PostHog has international insurance for our work trips, so do not buy travel insurance when traveling on behalf of PostHog.
  • It's fine to book your outbound / return flights for a different day to when you are required to be there as long as the flight is a similar price or less.
  • Any other costs outside of the days you are required to be at an event are of course not covered.

    If you find yourself needing to do extra travel outside of the regular things listed above, e.g. you've been asked to take a last minute trip to work on an emergency project, we may pay for a nicer seat here, especially if you are traveling at very short notice or long haul. Ask on #team-people-and-ops if you think this may apply to you. This is intended for genuine one-offs, not where you've decided you'd like to come along to an extra offsite!

  • We strongly encourage team members to try and work together in person when practical. This isn't limited to just working with people in your team, but we expect that you have a reasonable reason you need to work together.
  • If you're in the same place as other team members, even if you aren't directly working together, PostHog will cover the cost of a dinner or a fun activity
  • If you are meeting a user for an interview or a potential customer, we would encourage you to pick up the bill. At PostHog's current stage, a fancy coffee shop is encouraged. A fancy lunch or dinner is not.

Sponsorships

If you believe an open-source project is fundamentally important to the success of PostHog then we should set up a recurring sponsorship. In this case, see the open-source sponsorship Marketing initiative.

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