[Hannah-May]

Im a self employed cleaner atm but i am wanting to expand and take on alot more jobs. I am looking at taking on other self employed cleaners to go to jobs for me. They will get paid directly from the customer and the customer will pay me a finders/managment fee. What  im not sure of is am i able to stay self employed myself or do i change to be a limited company??

[pristineclean]

The answer to your question is that you can operate pretty much any type of business, including the type of business you're describing, as a sole trader and don't have to form a limited company.

[Ian Flint]

Hi Hannah-May,

Congratulations on expanding your business, just a few point to note. Firstly you can, of course, remain self employed as a sole trader and in fact with this type of business there is no real advantage to going limited until your taxable profits are in excess of £30k.
Next, and perhaps more relevant, if you are providing self employed cleaners to clients please ensure your public liabilities insurance covers sub contract labour. Also be very careful to have sufficiently water tight contracts between yourself, the client and the sub contractor so as the client and cleaners do not cut you out of the loop after a couple of weeks and you have done all that work for nothing. You will also find that even using self employed cleaners there are reliability issues and your clients will want consistency so make sure you can cover the work load when they let you down.
There is also a peculiarity in the uk tax law pertaining to the cleaning industry where by even using self employed labour you as the "employer" for want of a better term can be held liable for their national insurance contributions.
None of this is intended to put you off, just some pitfalls I have come across and found it better to use employed personnel contracted to zero hours and kept under 16 hours per week no sick pay due to the low hours and keep some floating staff around just incase. It is also a good idea to get your clients use to a couple of different cleaners as if they get too use to one it is very difficult to change or replace them when you inevitably have to.

Sorry to be so long winded, hope some of that helps.

Ian
 

[Tony Hodgkinson]

Good information guys. My cleaners are self employed I pay them an hourly rate for the contracts they work on for me. It gives you greater flexibility while you are still a small business.

You have to state in their contracts that they are self employed and that they are in charge of paying their own tax and national insurance and so on.

There are so many ifs buts and maybes.

As far as I know if you are to ask as a management agency you wont have to worry about NI and Tax but you will still need contractor liability because you are supplying the cleaners.

[Drewheald]

very risky area that, be on the safe side, when I hire self employed  cleaners they are given three months to supply us with their UTR number, this way you are covered.

[Tina AW]

HI all,

I am new to this site but am very interested in this topic.

I have started a cleaning agency earlier this year, which is going very well, I'm currently turning away work and have 12 people currently working on my behalf.  I did not intend to expand this quickly but we are getting so much work come in from word of mouth I am now struggling to cope as I do all the office/admin/getting work/visiting clients myself!!

I currently have only self employed people as I did lots of research before I started and this seemed to be the way everyonte else did it.  I currently charge the client a fee for managing of the cleaners, advertising, ensuring all their insurances etc are kept up to date and I also provide cover for when they are off.  I currently only take a small amount but as I grow I will need to increase the amount I take as I am now getting to the stage I will need software in place to manage the admin which I'm finding is quite expensive.  Can anyone give me some advice on suitable systems?

How do you all take payments?  The staff currently get paid directly by the client by cheque (not many use online banking) our current system means there is a lot of paperwork at the clients homes, not ideal.  They cannot be paid in cash as it needs to be traceable as some pay us with their care payments so the council need to be able to look at it.  I also get paid by cheque.  Obviously eventually cheques will be abolished so I wanted to look at making the change now and wondered can I take payment over the phone with a debit card?  What software would I need?

Do any of you have issues with timekeeping?  One of the biggest moans I have is that they do not turn up on time (we do a lot with elderly clients), they don't stay the full time.  I currently use paper timesheets and rely on the cleaners telling me what hours they have done ( another problems, clients changing their days/times with the cleaners which means I don't know who is available if someone goes off sick/or what needs covering)

As I am expanding this is becoming a problem.  I have found software where the cleaner would log in at the clients home and then log out when they go, this would in turn generate a timesheet to me and then an invoice.  Does anyone use anything like this?  I think it might be more for the care market.

I look forward to receiving your guidance, and hope I haven't posted in the wrong area