Finance
Welcome to the GitLab Finance Handbook
The GitLab Finance Department includes multiple Teams: Accounting, Financial Planning & Analysis, Tax and Business Operations Programs.
Quick Links
Correspondence
- Please use the
#finance chat channel in Slack for questions that don’t seem appropriate for the issue tracker or internal email correspondence.
- Accounts Payable- inquiries which relate to vendor and merchant invoices, or team member’s expenses should be sent to our Accounts Payable mailbox - ap@gitlab.com. You can also reach the AP team on Slack in the
#accountspayable or #expense-reporting-inquiries chat channels. Invoices that require payment processing should be sent to ap@gitlab.com.
- Billing Operations- customer billing inquiries should be sent to our Billing mailbox – billing@gitlab.com.
- Accounts Receivable - customer payment/remittance inquiries should be sent to our Accounts Receivable mailbox - AR@gitlab.com
- Payroll- inquiries which relate to contractor invoices should be sent to our Payroll mailbox - nonuspayroll@gitlab.com.
CFO Approvals
- Please use the
#cfo-approvals chat channel in Slack for alerting the CFO to a request for his approval
- Tag the CFO’s Staff EBA in the Slack request for visibility and followup
- Appropriate Finance team members in the approval flow must approve prior to requesting CFO approval
- All requests must go through the appropriate approvals process, include a link to the Issue or description and receive all approvals prior to requesting CFO approval
We Finance
Finance Handbooks
General Topics
For commonly requested company information, please visit our wiki page.
Company Accounts
Login information for the following accounts can be found in the Secretarial vault
on 1Password:
- FedEx
- Amazon
- IND (Immigratie en Naturalisatie Dienst, in the Netherlands) company number
If you need this information but cannot find it in your shared vaults, check with the People Connect Team members to get access.
Fiscal Year
A fiscal year is a one-year period that corporations use for accounting and budgeting.
GitLab’s Fiscal Year runs from February 1 to January 31. The fiscal year naming correlates to the ending month of the given fiscal year, for example FY25 is GitLab’s fiscal year running February 1, 2024 to January 31, 2025.
- Q1: February 1 through April 30
- Q2: May 1 through July 31
- Q3: August 1 through October 31
- Q4: November 1 through January 31
| Fiscal Year |
Calendar Year |
| FY25-Q1 |
2024-02-01 to 2024-04-30 |
| FY25-Q2 |
2024-05-01 to 2024-07-31 |
| FY25-Q3 |
2024-08-01 to 2024-10-31 |
| FY25-Q4 |
2024-11-01 to 2025-01-31 |
Refer to our writing style guidelines for proper use of date formats.
Revenue non-committee
- Internal Management Members: Chief Financial Officer (DRI), Chief Executive Officer, Chief Revenue Officer (model, guidance, plan, target)
Invoice template and where to send
Vendor invoices are to be sent to ap@gitlab.com and payroll@gitlab.com for contractors. An invoice template can be found in Google Docs by the name of “Invoice Template”.
Non-US contractors not from Hungary, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland, and Ukraine will get pay their monthly wages and expenses through iiPay. Here is the process:
- enter bank information in Workday under Bank Information tab. Note - new contractor should enter their bank information within 3 business days from their start date.
- enter VAT number if it is available
- submit monthly salary/bonus/commission invoice in through Google form by the 8th of each month (as described to you during onboarding)
- submit expenses through Navan Expense by the 8th of each month
- the scheduled payment date is the 22nd of each month
- iiPay will send out remittance advice along with the scheduled payment via your GitLab email address
Non-US contractors from Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland, and Ukraine will need to send their monthly invoice for salary/bonus/commission and any expenses by the 15th to payroll@gitlab.com.
In many cases, VAT will not be payable on transactions between GitLab BV and EU-based
vendors/contractors, thanks to “Shifted VAT”. To make use of this shifted VAT:
- The vendor/contractor writes the phrase “VAT shifted to recipient according to
article 44 and 196 of the European VAT Directive” on the invoice along with the
VAT-number of GitLab IT BV (NL860316828B01).
- On the vendor’s VAT return the revenue from GitLab BV goes to the rubric “Revenue within the EU”. It goes without saying that vendors are responsible for their own correct and timely filings.
- GitLab BV files the VAT on the VAT return, and is generally able to deduct this VAT all as part of the same return.
Timesheets for Hourly Employees
- People Ops and Finance will share a private Google Sheet with you where you will log your hours for each day in the “hours” column.
- There is a dropdown in the “pay type” column, with the default being Regular. There are also options for Overtime, Vacation, Sick, and Bereavement. Choose the appropriate pay type for your time.
- If you work overtime or more hours than agreed upon in your contract, please obtain approval from your manager and forward to Finance before payroll cutoff.
- Your timesheet is due one day prior to the submit payroll date, which is outlined for the calendar year on your timesheet.
How spend is allocated to departments
Budgets are aligned to departments, and budgets follow the owner who requested the spend. When determining who should request the spend, consider the owner of the outcome.
For example, work to enable a sales partner that will not be incorporated into the product would go to Sales. Work that will be part of the product and supported by engineering, should be charged to the Engineering budget.
Finance Business Partner Alignment
Types of Work that the team does
- Level 1: Keeping the lights on activity. Always striving to make this area as efficient as possible so more Layer 2 focus can be attained. Example: closing the books.
- Level 2: Operational Efficiencies, Business Engagement and Partnering, actionable insights for the organization. Examples: improving close process, partnering with sales to make a business decision
This page contains GitLab’s accounting and reporting policies, which can be made public. Please find our internal processes in the Accounting and Reporting internal handbook section.
Quote to cash
Invoicing to customers
Calculated Billings
Calculated billings is defined as revenue plus the sequential change in total deferred revenue as presented on the balance sheet.
We do not believe that calculated billings provides a meaningful indicator of financial performance as billings can be impacted by timing volatility of renewals, co-terming upgrades and multi year prepayment of subscriptions.
This page contains GitLab’s Accounts Payable department policies, procedures and guidelines. Our goal is to enable payments in a timely manner to both our team members and our external partners. We also provide useful links to other areas of the handbook that are relevant to the Accounts Payable procedures.
Introduction
Welcome to Accounts Payable, commonly referred to as AP. You should be able to find answers to most of your questions in the sections below. If you cannot find what you are looking for, then please connect with us:
Please refer to the authorization matrix here
Disclosure Committee Composition
- Chairperson: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Legal Officer and Principal Accounting Officer
- Members: Chief Revenue Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, VP, Corporate Controller, VP of Internal Audit, VP of Finance, Senior Director of Legal- Corporate, Director of R2R, Chief Product Officer, Chief Information Security Officer
- Management DRI: Chief Financial Officer
Disclosure Committee Charter
GitLab has established the disclosure committee (the “Committee”) to help satisfy its obligation under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) to maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures.
GitLab’s CEO and CFO adopted the Committee charter to outline the company’s Committee’s governance and disclosure procedures. Please click here to read the Disclosure Committee Charter.
Welcome to the GitLab Finance Growth and Development Page
The GitLab Finance Department is dedicated to the growth and development of our team members. To ensure that this is a focus area, we have come up with five programs for FY22.
On-Boarding Growth and Development
Finance Team Member on-boarding will include specific tasks and information to foster a culture of continued development. This will include:
Work Style Assessment
Executive Summary
Recurring revenue variance ex-JV
Variance Actual to Forecast of recurring revenue, excluding joint ventures. This metric falls under “Accurate and reliable financial forecast” umbrella.
Welcome to the FP&A Team Handbook. Our missions is to maximize GitLab's long-term valuation by enabling e-group and FP&A to plan, prioritize, and execute effectively
Learn more about working with various members of the Finance team
1. POLICY
GitLab’s Global Travel & Expense Policy is meant to provide guidance to all Team Members to ensure that we act in the best interest of our Company at all times. The purpose of this policy is to:
- Provide guidance around allowable reimbursable expenses.
- Ensure the best utilization of our Team Member’s time.
- Drive transparency across all business travel related spend.
- Help Team Members understand that a centralized travel program results in improved safety, visibility, support and savings.
- Prevent violations of applicable anti-bribery and corruption laws.
2. Responsibilities
Team Members:
We have an externally facing investor relation website.
The page you are on now the handbook that describes internal processes around investor relations.
Quarterly Earnings Process
As a public company we share financial results publicly after the close of each fiscal quarter or fiscal year. The key deliverables for each earnings cycle are:
- Earnings press release summarizing business & financial results, providing guidance
- Earnings call with prepared remarks by CEO and CFO followed by Q&A with sellside analysts
- Updated investor presentation , webcast, transcript, posted to ir.gitlab.com
- File required forms with the SEC, e.g. 10-Q, 10-K, 8-K
A cross-functional working group collaborates on the earnings cycle each quarter. Key contributors are the e-Group, IR, FP&A, Accounting, PR, Exec Comms, and Legal teams. The DRI for this project is the CFO; each work-stream has functional DRIs.
All team members and contractors must protect our Company assets, such as equipment, supplies, cash, and information. Treat Company assets with the same care you would if they were your own. No team member or contractor may commit theft, fraud or embezzlement, or misuse Company property.
Guidelines
- As a public company, GitLab has an obligation to act in the best interests of the corporation and its shareholders. This obligation is shared by all team members and is the basis of our global travel and expense policy as a public company; team members must be thoughtful in spending the Company’s money.
- Spending Company money includes travel and expenses.
- You may privately use GitLab property, a MacBook for example, to check your private e-mails or watch a movie as long as it does not violate the law, harm GitLab, or interfere with Intellectual Property. More details can be found in the Internal Acceptable Use Policy.
- File your expense report in a timely manner, as expense claims over 90 days from purchase date will not be reimbursed unless approved by your Manager. The sooner it is submitted, the sooner you will get reimbursement.
- If team members knowingly submit expenses for reimbursement for personal purchases that are not covered in the expense policy, this is a violation of our Code of Business Conduct & Ethics.
Policy Links and Resources
This table captures all of the links for different policies that are documented around using Company money. This includes information of when to use our expense tool Navan, when to use a virtual credit card and when to get a PO from Zip.
What is Procurement?
The Procurement team manages GitLab’s Supplier Lifecycle through the process of strategically vetting and selecting vendors, negotiating commercial terms, the purchasing of goods and services, and managing the renewal or vendor offboarding process.
Procurement Team Alignment
Division alignment for spend over >$25k USD / year:
- Marketing - Ashley Abbate
- Sales - Ashley Abbate
- Product - Adrienne Ruhaak
- Engineering - Adrienne Ruhaak
- People - Adrienne Ruhaak
- Finance - Adrienne Ruhaak
- Legal - Adrienne Ruhaak
- All division spend <$25k USD - Dasha Yarmusik
- Individual Software Purchases - Anam Shaikh
Shared Goals
Procurement is a cross-functional team that supports GitLab as a public company. We have four key objectives monitored in the following ways:
The tax department is responsible for GitLab's overall tax strategy including all components of tax compliance, tax planning and accounting for income taxes. In addition, the tax department manages GitLab's statutory requirements including statutory audits, filing of entity-level financial information, transfer pricing, and ensuring intercompany transactions are recorded appropriately.
Travel Safety and Security
Team member safety and security are a top priority for GitLab. If a team member feels uncomfortable or unsafe traveling to a location on GitLab’s behalf due to concerns about the location, region, personal health, or other safety or security risks, please contact People Connect via Slack or email. The People Connect team will assist by helping to connect the team member with the right resources.
Last modified December 12, 2024:
BHR Update Part 1 (787c989f)
