IndexCoop x Parcel Treasury Ops Partnership

Authors: @Hammad1412, @ElliottWatts and @Pepperoni_Joe

Introduction

IndexCoop and Parcel are looking to partner on building out a new treasury operations program focusing on managing our contributor reward spend and helping to provide useful insights.

Parcel focuses on making treasury management simplified for DAOs. They currently work with Aave, Compound, Synthetix and FWB DAO to name a few of their partners. The Parcel system is built ‘on top’ of gnosis safe and offers 1-click mass payouts, automated recurring payments and strategic asset management (we do this in house so not looking to outsource this). They have carried out $27M+ mass payouts to date.

In this document we will break down IndexCoop and Parcels vision around the ‘Treasury Ops Program’ which we hope to be partnering on.

This document will be broken down into the following sections:

  • Vision
  • Scope of work
    • Payroll & Compensation
    • Budgeting, financial accounting and reporting insights
  • Benefits
  • Costs
  • Interpedenences
  • Next steps/Ask of the community

Vision

Parcel’s ‘Treasury Ops Program’ aims to get rid of excel spreadsheets and help DAOs with coordination across treasury funds, working groups and contributions. This partnership aims to aid IndexCoop in automating accounting, payroll and compensation processes and reporting around the relevant data. Thus creating a more efficient and robust system which can be used as the organisation scales.

Scope of Work

In this section we aim to break down the initial scope of the work in order to achieve the above vision. Please note these are our initial ideas around development and could be subject to change as the project progresses, any major changes to the scope we will update the community.

Payroll & Compensation

Current State (Short loom video walkthrough of current process and challeneges Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software) :

  • Contributor wallet addresses on excel which have to be managed manually
  • No automation of payments

Rewards process on excel with following steps:

  • Firstly, contributors fill out a sheet with their contributions for the month tagged to the relevant WG.
  • These are then reviewed in the master sheet which is similar to the contribution sheet. The sheet has filter views created for each WG, this allows the WG leads to go in and assign a reward to the contributions tagged to their respective WG.
  • The final process is that a final output sheet is prepared in a suitable format to be able to be exported as a csv file. The sheet includes the token address (the one to be distributed), wallet address and amount to be distributed.
  • Engineering carry out payment to individuals wallets

Future State:

New Rewards Process removing spreadsheets and carried out on Parcel:

  • Contributor directory which includes name and wallet addresses
  • Contributor submits work through Parcel; with links, hours assigned tagged to relevant working group as per usual
  • Work group lead/s can review contribution submission and allocate reward amount
  • One click payment for split between USDC/Index
  • Fixed stipends can be automated to be paid on a chosen date
  • Individual Contributor dashboards
  • Parcel is looking to build out tracking for vesting contracts which will enable smoother review of vested schedules especially since we are currently working through our Owl levels and compensation structure this will be invaluable.

Budgeting, financial accounting and reporting insights

Current State:

  • Manual review of contributor reward spend and update within the financial statement model
  • Limited tracking and review on an owl by owl basis
  • Manual review and mapping of transactions

Future State:

  • Parcel will become a one stop shop whereby we can see each individual owl’s profile will detail;
    • Wallet address’ for payment
    • Details over historic payments
    • Summary of all committed rewards and vested contract option (extremely beneficial when this will become more widespread across the DAO)
  • The ability to perform in depth reviews of contributor spend across a significant time period on a number of levels, such as;
    • Spend by Product
    • Spend by WG
    • Spend by Owl level

Moving away from spreadsheets:

  • Operations account managed through Parcel
  • Dashboards and analysis around the following:
    • WG split of spend - Budget vs actuals
    • Analysis of rewards by contributor wallet broken down for each WG, product and owl level

Benefits

  • Removal of operational burden of payroll process on the Coop - Will improve work efficiency and scalability as automated payroll systems can accommodate the growth of the Coop allowing decision makers to spend more time on performing vital IndexCoop activities.
  • Improved record keeping and accountability - Automated payroll simplifies ( ie. fixed stipends) the process by allowing changes to be made directly in the system, where they are stored for easy access. The changes include: adding new contributors to the WG, updating salaries, wallet addresses, for direct deposits
  • Engineering WG capacity - bringing Index Coop engineering capacity focused on payroll to zero
  • Administrative burden within Finance Work Group is relieved
  • Summary of all contributors within the DAO, allowing for detailed reviews on quarterly proposals and for benchmarking purposes.

Costs

There will be no initial costs for a year as Parcel is in the process of becoming a DAO and has not monetized the service. The other cost benefit will be that for the first 6 months Parcel will sponsor any gas fees incurred from transactions carried out using the system.

Interpedenences

Noting the interdependencies with ongoing work as part of Index 2.0.

  • Finance of the Future - especially the move to transition operational funding from the Funding Council wallet to the Operations Account
  • Index 2.0 - especially the holistic redesign of compensation and community token allocation

Next steps/ask of community

  • Community call with Parcel - Will provide update once date finalised
  • We will be performing a trial run of the October Contributor rewards with ParcelDAO
  • Please provide any feedback, question or suggestions

Temperature check:

  • YES - Go ahead with the partnership with Parcel on the ‘Treasury Ops program’
  • NO - DO NOT go ahead with the partnership with Parcel on the ‘Treasury Ops program’

0 voters

9 Likes

Improving the payroll process within the Coop is an important undertaking. Payroll, accounting, and treasury decisions are hard in an org as chaotic as the Coop, but removing the operational burden while also improving transparency, accountability, and speed is a big level up. These are particularly important when considering it is all built on the security of Gnosis. After having multiple meetings with the core team at Parcel, I am confident that their treasury ops will be a great service to the Coop. In addition, they have multiple additional services in the pipeline that bring some structure that is perfectly suited for the DAO world. Thanks @Hammad1412, @ElliottWatts and @Pepperoni_Joe for the work on this and excited to see Parcel in action. Hoot hoot!!

3 Likes

cosign. recent changes have already made it easier than it used to be, but still a clunker

3 Likes

Nice work getting this together all!

I am curious - do we have any insight into costs once Parcel begins monetizing a year out?

Very valid question! Having spoken to Parcel team about this they are still in the process of building out their business model around this do not see this happening for at least a year. However they envisage it might something like they use some basis point per payout

1 Like