Spending money

You'll spend company money often, and we want that to be easy. Flagon runs lean, because the less we waste the more runway we have to make this work; see staying alive. But being productive and effective matters more than saving a few dollars. This page exists to help you make good calls, not to make you fill in a form.

Guiding principles

We run a context-based expense policy rather than an approval-based one. Before you spend, ask yourself two questions:

• Can you clearly explain why this expense is in Flagon's best interest?
• Would you be comfortable explaining it to the whole team, in public?

If the answer to both is yes, it's almost certainly fine. If you find yourself inventing a justification, you already have your answer. When you genuinely aren't sure, ask for context, not permission: a quick question in the open beats either a rubber-stamp or a guess.

How it works

• Use the company card for work expenses, not your personal one. If you ever have to use a personal card by accident, claim it back promptly with a receipt.
• Small and obviously work-related? Just buy it and note what it was. A subscription you need, a book, cloud credits, a domain. No permission needed.
• Bigger or less obvious? Say what and why in the open first, so someone can catch the thing you didn't think of. That's a sanity check, not a gate.
• Recurring costs are small forever-decisions. Before adding a subscription, check we don't already pay for something that does the job. See adding tools.

Documentation, and why it matters

A trust-based policy only survives if everyone keeps the paperwork clean. Attach an itemized receipt and a short memo to anything past a small threshold, promptly, while you still remember what it was for. A good memo says what the item was, why the business needed it, and any useful context: who it was for, which project. An itemized receipt plus that memo is all finance or an auditor should need to understand a charge months later.

Missing receipts and vague memos turn into hours of "what was this charge from June?" at audit time. A quick upload now saves everyone that later. If documentation consistently slips, the only alternatives are rigid pre-approvals for everyone or treating it as a performance issue, and we'd much rather not go there.

What's reasonable to spend on

• Equipment. A machine that doesn't fight you, a decent monitor, and a chair that doesn't wreck your back are all easy yeses. Refurbished is often great value. We tend to centralize laptop purchases so they're tracked properly and can be returned or passed on when someone leaves.
• Software. Individual tools are your preference, and we love a good recommendation. We're deliberately wary of adding collaborative software, since each new shared tool is another place the truth can fragment; the reasoning is in adding tools.
• Learning. Books, courses, a conference that makes you better at the work. Growing at the job is part of the job, see growing here.
• Travel and working together. Economy by default, and we actively encourage working in person when it's useful. If you're in the same place as colleagues, a shared meal is on the company.

When spending isn't okay

Some things are clearly not company expenses: personal purchases on the company card, or anything you wouldn't be comfortable explaining publicly. If a questionable expense was an honest misunderstanding, we'll just clarify and move on. Deliberately spending company money in ways that aren't in Flagon's interest, or trying to route around the guidelines, is a different thing, and we treat it as serious misconduct.

Bigger vendor contracts

Some spend isn't a personal subscription but a platform a team runs, on a contract that bills continuously and can reach real money, think infrastructure or security tooling. The guiding principles above still apply; they just matter more. Whoever has the most context on the contract owns keeping an eye on usage against its limits so nobody is surprised by the bill, and flags early, before an overage lands and keeps landing, rather than after. Loop in the relevant people (and legal, for anything new) while it's still cheap to change course. Renewals get the same care as a new purchase: do the diligence, don't rubber-stamp.