fleet/handbook/business-operations

Business Operations

This handbook page details processes specific to working with and within the Business Operations (BizOps) department.

What we do

The BizOps department is directly responsible for these traditional functions: People, Finance, Legal, IT, and Revenue Operations (RevOps).

Team

Role	Contributor(s)
Head of Business Operations	Joanne Stableford (@jostableford)
Business Operations Engineer	Nathan Holliday (@hollidayn)
Head of Revenue Operations	Taylor Hughes (@hughestaylor)

Contact us

• To make a request of this department, create an issue and a team member will get back to you within one business day.
  • Please use issue comments and GitHub mentions to communicate follow-ups or answer questions related to your request.
  • Any Fleet team member can view the kanban board for this department, including pending tasks and the status of new requests.
  • Submit legal questions and requests to Business Operations department. (Business Operations will escalate first-of-its-kind agreements to the CEO. The CEO will review business terms and consult with lawyers as necessary.)
• If urgent, or if you need help submiting your request, mention a team member in the #g-business-operations Slack channel.
  • If you need help during onboarding ask in #help-onboarding.
  • For all questions related to your company credit card, ask in #help-brex.

Tools we use

There are a number of tools that are used throughout Fleet. Some of these tools are used company-wide, while others are department-specific. You can see a list of those tools in "Tools we use" (private Google doc).

Role-specific licenses

Certain new team members, especially in go-to-market (GTM) roles, will need paid access to paid tools like Salesforce and LinkedIn Sales Navigator immediately on their first day with the company. Gong licenses that other departments need may request them from BizOps and we will make sure there is no license redundancy in that department. The table below can be used to determine which paid licenses they will need, based on their role:

Role	Salesforce CRM	Salesforce "Inbox"	LinkedIn (paid)	Gong (paid)	Zoom (paid)
🐋 AE	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
🐋 CSM	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
🐋 SC	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
🫧 SDR	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
⚗️ PM	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
🔦 CEO	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
Other roles	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌

Warning: Do NOT buy LinkedIn Recruiter. AEs and SDRs should use their personal Brex card to purchase the monthly Core Sales Navigator plan. Fleet does not use a company wide Sales Navigator account. The goal of Sales Navigator is to access to profile views and data, not InMail. Fleet does not send InMail.

Namecheap

Domain name registrations are handled through Namecheap. Access is managed via 1Password.

Vetty

Fleet team members with access to Fleet's infrastructure undergo a background check provided through Vetty. Only the most recent background checks appear on the home page of Vetty's dashboard. To access a complete list of background checks run in Vetty, scroll down to the bottom of the candidates page and click "View Historical".

Recurring expenses

Recurring monthly or annual expenses are tracked as recurring, non-personnel expenses in "🧮 The Numbers" (¶confidential Google Sheet), along with their payment source. Reconciliation of recurring expenses happens monthly.

Use this spreadsheet as the source of truth. Always make changes to it first before adding or removing a recurring expense. Only track significant expenses. (Other things besides amount can make a payment significant; like it being an individualized expense, for example.)

Payroll

Many of these processes are automated, but it's vital to check Gusto and Plane manually for accuracy.

• Salaried fleeties are automated in Gusto and Plane.
• Hourly fleeties and consultants are a manual process each month in Gusto and Plane.

Payroll type	What to use	DRI
Commissions and ramp	"Off-cycle" payroll	Head of Revenue Operations
Sign-on bonus	"Bonus" payroll	Head of Business Operations
Performance bonus	"Bonus" payroll	Head of Business Operations
Accelerations (quarterly)	"Off-cycle" payroll	Head of Revenue Operations
US contractor payroll	"Off-cycle" payroll	Head of Business Operations

Responsibilities

Add a seat to Salesforce

Here are the steps we take to grant appropriate Salesforce licenses to a new hire:

1. Go to "My Account".
2. View contracts -> pick current contract.
3. Add the desired number of licenses.
4. Sign DocuSign sent to the email.
5. The order will be processed in ~30m.
6. Once the basic license has been added, you can create a new user using the new team member's @fleetdm.com email and assign a license to it.
7. To also assign a user an "Inbox license", go to the "Setup" page and select "User > Permission sets". Find the inbox permission set and assign it to the new team member.

Process an email from a state agency

From time to time, you may get notices via email (or in the mail) from state agencies regarding Fleet's withholding and/or unemployment tax accounts. You can resolve some of these notices on your own by verifying and/or updating the settings in your Gusto account.

If the notice is regarding an upcoming change to your deposit schedule or unemployment tax rate, make the required change in Gusto, such as:

• Update your unemployment tax rate.
• Update your federal deposit schedule.
• Update your state deposit schedule.

In Gusto, you can click How to review your notice to help you understand what kind of notice you received and what additional action you can take to help speed up the time it takes to resolve the issue.

Note: Many agencies do not send notices to Gusto directly, so it’s important that you read and take action before any listed deadlines or effective dates of requested changes, in case you have to do something. If you can't resolve the notice on your own, are unsure what the notice is in reference to, or the tax notice has a missing payment or balance owed, follow the steps in the Report and upload a tax notice in Gusto.

Inform managers about hours worked

Every Friday at 1:00pm CT, we gather hours worked for anyone who gets paid hourly by Fleet. This includes core team members and consultants, regardless of employment classification, and regardless whether inside or outside of the United States.

Here's how:

• For every hourly core team member in Gusto or Pilot.co, look up their manager (who they report to).
• If any direct report is hourly in Pilot.co and does not submit their hours until the end of the month, still list them, but explain. (See example below.)
• Consultants don't have a formal reporting structure or manager. Instead, send their hours worked to the CEO, no matter who the consultant is.

Then, send the CEO and each manager a direct message in Slack by copying and pasting the following template:

Here are the hours worked by your direct reports since last Saturday at midnight (YYYY-MM-DD):

• 🧑‍🚀 Alice Bobberson: 21.25
• 🧑‍🚀 Charles David: 3.5
• 🧑‍🚀 Philippe Timebender: (hours not available until they invoice at the end of the month)

And here are the hours worked by consultants:

• 💁 Bombalurina: 0
• 💁 Jennyanydots: 0
• 💁 Skimbleshanks: 19
• 💁 Griza Bella: 0

More info: https://fleetdm.com/handbook/business-operations#inform-managers-about-hours-worked

Run US contractor payroll

For Fleet's US contractors, running payroll is a manual process:

1. Add the amount to be paid to the "Gross" line.
2. Review hours ("Time tools > Time tracking")
3. Adjust time frame to match current payroll period (the 27th through 26th of the month)
4. Sync hours and run contractor payroll.

Run US commission payroll

• Update commission calculator with new revenue from any deals that are closed/won (have a subscription agreement signed by both parties) and have an effective start date within the previous month.
  • Find detailed notes on this process in Notes - Run commission payroll in Gusto.
• Let the Head of Business Operations know they can run the commission payroll. Use the off-cycle payroll option in Gusto. Be sure to classify the payment as "Commission" in the "other earnings" field and not the generic "Bonus."
• Once commission payroll has been run, update the commission calculator to mark the commission as paid.

Process monthly accounting

Create a new montly accounting issue for the current month and year named "Closing out YYYY-MM" in GitHub and complete all of the tasks in the issue. (This uses the monthly accounting issue template.

• SLA: The monthly accounting issue should be completed and closed before the 7th of the month.
• The close date is tracked each month in KPIs.
• When is the issue created? We create and close the monthly accounting issue for the previous month within the first 7 days of the following month. For example, the monthly accounting issue to close out the month of January is created promptly in February and closed before the end of the day, Feb 7th. A convenient trick is to create the issue on the first Friday of the month and close it ASAP.

Check finances for quirks

Every quarter, we check Quickbooks Online (QBO) for discrepancies and follow up on quirks.

• Check to make sure bookkeeping quirks are all accounted for and resolved or in progress toward resolution.
• Check balance sheet and profit and loss statements (P&Ls) in QBO against the monthly workbooks in Google Drive.

Report quarterly numbers in Chronograph

Follow these steps to perform quarterly reporting for Fleet's investors:

• Login to Chronograph and upload our profit and loss statement (P&L), balance sheet and cash flow statements for CRV (all in one book saved in Google Drive.
• Provide updated metrics for the following items using Fleet's KPI spreadsheet.
  • Headcount at end of the previous quarter.
  • Starting ARR for the previous quarter.
  • Total new ARR for the previous quarter.
  • "Upsell ARR" (new ARR from expansions only- Chronograph defines "upsell" as price increases for any reason. - Fleet does not "upsell" anything; we deliver more value and customers enroll more hosts), downgrade ARR and churn ARR (if any) for the previous quarter.
  • Ending ARR for the previous quarter.
  • Starting number of customers, churned customers, and the number of new customers Fleet gained during the previous quarter.
  • Total amount of Fleet customers at the end of the previous quarter.
  • Gross margin %
    • How to calculate: (total revenue for the quarter - cost of goods sold for the quarter)/total revenue for the quarter (these metrics can be found in our books from Pilot). Chronograph will automatically conver this number to a %.
  • Net dollar retention rate
    • How to calculate: (starting ARR + new subscriptions and expansions - churn)/starting ARR.
  • Cash burn
    • How to calculate: (start of quarter runway - end of quarter runway)/3.

Grant equity

Equity grants for new hires are queued up as part of the hiring process, then grants and consents are batched and processed quarterly.

Doing an equity grant involves:

1. executing a board consent
2. the recipient and CEO signing paperwork about the stock options
3. updating the number of shares for the recipient in the equity plan
4. updating Carta to reflect the grant

For the status of stock option grants, exercises, and all other common stock including advisor, founder, and team member equity ownership, see Fleet's equity plan. For information about investor ownership, see Carta.

Fleet's equity plan is the source of truth, not Carta. Neither are pro formas sent in an email attachment, even if they come from lawyers.

Anyone can make mistakes, and none of us are perfect. Even when we triple check. Small mistakes in share counts can be hard to attribute, and can cause headaches and eat up nights of our CEO's and operations team's time. If you notice what might be a discrepancy between the equity plan and any other secondary source of information, please speak up and let Fleet's CEO know ASAP. Even if you're wrong, your note will be appreciated.

Deliver annual report for venture line

Within 60 days of the end of the year, follow these steps:

• Provide Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) with our balance sheet and profit and loss statement (P&L, sometimes called a cashflow statement) for the past twelve months.
• Provide SVB with our annual operating budgets and projections (on a quarterly basis) for the coming year.
• Deliver this as early as possible in case they have questions.

Rituals

The following table lists this department's rituals, frequency, and Directly Responsible Individual (DRI).

TODO: Verify each of these points to the correct link above. Then extrapolate into rituals.yml. (See CEO handbook page for an example.)

Ritual	Frequency	Description	DRI
Key review	every three weeks	Every release cycle, a key review deck is prepared and presented.	Head of Business Operations
Informing managers about hours worked	Weekly	See Informing managers about hours worked".	Head of Business Operations
Payroll	Monthly before payroll runs	Every month, Mike McNeil audits the payroll platforms for accuracy.	Head of Business Operations
US contractor payroll	Monthly	Sync contractor hours to payments in Gusto and run payroll for the month.	Head of Business Operations
Commission payroll	Monthly	Use the commission calculator to determine the commission payroll to be run in Gusto.	Taylor Hughes
Revenue report	Weekly	At the start of every week, check the Salesforce reports for past due invoices, non-invoiced opportunities, and past due renewals. Report any findings to in the #g-sales channel by mentioning Alex Mitchell and Mike McNeil.	Taylor Hughes
Monthly accounting	Monthly	Create the monthly close GitHub issue and walk through the steps.	Nathanael Holliday
Quarterly grants	Quarterly	Create the quarterly close GitHub issue and walk through the steps.	Nathanael Holliday
AP invoice monitoring	Weekly	Look for new accounts payable invoices and make sure that Fleet's suppliers are paid.	Nathanael Holliday
Tax preparation	Annually on the first week of March	Provide information to tax team with Deloitte and assist with filing and paying state and federal returns	Nathanael Holliday
Vanta check	Monthly	Look for any new actions in Vanta due in the upcoming months and create issues to ensure they're done on time.	Nathan Holliday
Investor reporting	Quarterly	Provide updated metrics for CRV in Chronograph.	Nathanael Holliday
Applicant forwarding	Daily	Whenever an application notification arrives in the BizOps slack channel, forward this notification to the hiring channel for that position.	Joanne Stableford
KPI roundup + weekly update	Weekly	Update KPI spreadsheet with BizOps KPI data by 5pm US central time every Friday. At 5pm check other department KPIs to make sure they have been updated, and if not, notify DRIs and the apprentice to the CEO which KPIs have not been updated.	Nathanael Holliday

Stubs

The following stubs are included only to make links backward compatible.

Open positions

Please see 📖handbook/company#open-positions for a list of open job postings at Fleet.

Weekly updates

Please see 📖handbook/ceo#weekly-updates

Directly responsible individuals

Please see 📖handbook/company/why-this-way#why-direct-responsibility to learn more about DRIs.

Security

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#security.

Vendor questionnaires

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#vendor-questionnaires

Getting a contract signed

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#getting-a-contract-signed

Getting a contract reviewed

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#getting-a-contract-reviewed

Zapier and DocuSign

Please see 📖handbook/ceo#zapier-and-docusign

Gong

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#gong.

Troubleshooting Gong

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#troubleshooting-gong.

Excluding calls from being recorded

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications#excluding-calls-from-being-recorted.

Salesforce

Please see 📖handbook/business-operations#add-a-seat-to-salesforce.

Intake

Kanban

Legal Operations

IT Operations

Finance Operations

Taxes and compliance

State quarterly payroll and tax filings

CorpNet state registration process

Annual reporting for capital credit line

Equity grants

Finance rituals

Monthly rituals

Quarterly rituals

Informing managers about hours worked

Monthly accounting

Please see above on this page for the latest content for these topics within the new framework for departmental handbook pages.

Zoom

Slack

Email relays

Meetings

Scheduling a meeting

Internal meeting scheduling

Modifying an event organized by someone else

External meeting scheduling

Performance feedback

Levels of confidentiality

Relocating

Celebrations

Workiversaries

Spending company money

Brex

Travel

Attending conferences or company travel

Non-travel purchases that exceed a Brex cardholder's limit

Reimbursements

Individualized expenses

Benefits

Paid time off

Taking time off

Holidays

New parent leave

Retirement contributions

US based team members

Non-US team members

Coworking

Team member onboarding

Before the start date

Recommendations for new teammates

Training expectations

Sightseeing tour

Contributor experience training

Onboarding retrospective

Compensation

Compensation changes

Reprovisioning equipment

Equipment retention and replacement

Equipment

Laptops

Purchasing a company-issued device

Selecting a laptop

Buying other new equipment

Tracking equipment

Returning equipment

Github

GitHub labels

Please see 📖handbook/company/communications for all sections above.

Hiring

Consultants

Hiring a consultant

Who ISN'T a consultant?

Sending a consulting agreement

Updating a consultant's fee

Advisor

Adding an advisor

Finalizing a new advisor

Core team member

Creating a new position

Approving a new position

Recruiting

Receiving job applications

Candidate correspondence email templates

Hiring restrictions

Incompatible former employers

Incompatible locations

Interviewing

Hiring a new team member

Making an offer

Steps after an offer is accepted

Key reviews

Tracking hours

Informing managers about hours worked

Departures

Communicating departures

Please see 📖handbook/company/leadership for all sections above.