[D.Salkeld_Ltd]

Hi All,

I have been W/C now for 20 years and have come to the point, as I have many times before : : Where I am finding it difficult to do any more but ther is loads of work out there.
"Take on staff " I hear you call.
But HOW do you make it pay

How do you handle the old Vodka And Tonic I've never had to worry about VAT but if I had a van and 2 staff then me doing a bit of my own I would be over the Vat limit and have to add 17.5% to my prices

Then theres the tax liability on a van

How DO you go about expanding and taking on Staff

Any Advice appreciated

David Salked

[NWH]

If you can trust the guy or girl rent them part of your round that way you know the exact work they will be doing and how long it should take to complete,doing it that way it`s easier to get round the old VAT as they will pay you a percentage or vice versa.

[Mhall]

Surely you could charge your employees a flat fee per week to rent the equipment, then have them work on a self employed basis. This way you know what money you are getting every week and less chance them skimming work and not cutting you in.

Other than that, why not set up - D.salkeld Ltd North & D.salkeld Ltd South..... Two seperate companies with two VAT thresholds??

[matt]

Other than that, why not set up - D.salkeld Ltd North & D.salkeld Ltd South..... Two seperate companies with two VAT thresholds??

isnt that practise now highly frowned upon by the IR

[trevor perry]

i think if you set up two different companies trading from same address using same equipment it is illegal , you will just have to bite the bullet explain to your customers you are now going to become v.a.t registered and there will be a price increase tell them you understand 17 1/2  % is a big increase and you would be willing to absorb half of it on the domestic work , any commercial work shouldnt make a difference as they will claim the v.a.t back.
   it can be a real pain trying to grow a business the bigger it gets the more costs or incurred so weigh up if it is worth it or not as you may end up working more for the same money for a while.

[Mhall]

There is always a way round these obsticles, get your missus to set a company up.

The Inland Revenue don't think twice about having the public collect money for them, and screwing the backside out of anyone they can, so i think its only right we do our best to avoid it!! Legally of course

[j.v. price ltd]

find a good accountant and take his advice in going forward

[Trevor Knight]

Hi All,

I have been W/C now for 20 years and have come to the point, as I have many times before : : Where I am finding it difficult to do any more but ther is loads of work out there.
"Take on staff " I hear you call.
But HOW do you make it pay

How do you handle the old Vodka And Tonic I've never had to worry about VAT but if I had a van and 2 staff then me doing a bit of my own I would be over the Vat limit and have to add 17.5% to my prices

Then theres the tax liability on a van

How DO you go about expanding and taking on Staff

Any Advice appreciated

David Salked

Hi David,

There is no easy solution to employing staff, yes it has a lot of pitfalls but equally it has many benefits.

The one thing I can remember when I first made that step was that all of a sudden I had this complex, desire, understanding that I HAD to make it work and that I had responsibilities and believe it or not, I actually enjoyed the pressure. Since then I have grown and grown and without my guy's I would be nothing to what I am now!

Think of it this way, if it doesn't work out the worst that will happen is laying your staff off and going back to operating as a 1 man band. There is now shame in failure but more dissapointment in wishing you have given it a go!

Go for it, you just don't know what will happen!

Best of luck,

Trev

[NWH]

You could always say to yourself that i`ll give 6mnts or a year and see how i get on,one things for sure theres plenty of work out there.Theres actually not that much paper work involved,use a decent accountant he`ll probobly charge you about another 250-300 quid a year but it`s well worth it as it`ll take the pressure off you a bit.And if you get any slackers get rid of em straight away don`t keep giving second chances,they`ll milk you till your dry.Cheers.

[Ian Lancaster]

David you have e-mail

[Moderator David@stives]

David

If you are  nowhere near the vat threshold now , then i doubt you are charging enough to be able to sustain employing staff to make a profit. At best you might just break even.

The first rule is either to increase your bad work considerably or get rid of it altogether and chase some better work.

Ask yourself how much would you like to make off each employee per week and work backwards from there ie , van costs, national insurance, holiday pay,vat, employers liability, sickness , uniforms etc. It all adds up to big bucks.

Dave

[williamx]

Dave

Have you thought about changing the times that you clean your customers.

For example you clean your customers on a four weekly basis and charge £10.00, under your new working practices you now clean your customers property's every 6 weeks and charge them £13.00.

Most of your customers should except this as they are saving money, those that don't then you can either charge them more, dump them or carrying on as normal.  All new customers should be signed up on a 6 weekly rota.

So if you were cleaning 20 houses a day at £10.00 you earned £200, now you still clean 20 houses a day but you now earn £260, which can make you £300 extra per week.

You could also offer a different service where by you don't add new customers onto your round but instead you will clean their windows when they want you too, but you have a minimum charge of £25.00 per clean, they will then call you out every few months or so.

As for the dreaded VAT, you can start on the 10% Vat threshold, which makes it easier to absorb.

[Clive McDonald]

Is 10% the flat rate figure for window cleaning?

[macmac]

If you are  nowhere near the vat threshold now , then i doubt you are charging enough to be able to sustain employing staff to make a profit. At best you might just break even.

how do you work that one out

tony

[Moderator David@stives]

What i am trying to say is if you are taking less than £50k per man then you will struggle to make profit out of them.

therefor if one member say takes £40k a year about £7k will be vat £25k will be there wage , take into all the other costs and there wont be much left.

If you cant do £50k yourself how can you expect your staff to do it ?.

[supernova77]

£25k will be there wage

 

What??   25k?   You pay your guys £25k per year???

Andy

[macmac]

25K

do you have any vacancies dave

tony

[Moderator David@stives]

well even at £20k you will struggle with profit, If you want to keep a goood worker then you have to pay them well or they will leave and set up on there own.

Most self employed tradesmen i know are now earning at least £200 a day, so £100 a day for a window cleaner is not unreasonable.

Remember the old saying pay peanuts and you will get monkeys.

Dave

[Trevor Knight]

well even at £20k you will struggle with profit, If you want to keep a goood worker then you have to pay them well or they will leave and set up on there own.

Most self employed tradesmen i know are now earning at least £200 a day, so £100 a day for a window cleaner is not unreasonable.

Remember the old saying pay peanuts and you will get monkeys.

Dave

This is so true!!!

I pay my guys a good salary and for exactly the reason Dave has stated above. If you pay them the going rate or less then it doesn't take a scientist to sit in a van and think "hang on, I am being paid £8, £9, £10 (whatever your paying) an hour and yet if I clean 1 £10 house an hour myself I would be better off going it alone!

I went through employees like a kid goes through sweets in my early days, paying as little as I could and expecting as much as I could in return, weird thing is they kept quitting?? In the end I employed a guy (who is still with me now, 6 years later) who I knew as a friend, he had no w/c experience, had a good job and a lovely family. I sat down with him and told him my previous disasters and how hard it was finding good reliable staff.

He told me that if I matched his current salary, almost double what I had ever paid out in the past! that he would join me and I knew he was a hard worker!! I contempleted how in the world I could afford this as this would leave me with very little of my own but after weeks of deliberating I took the plunge and employed him.

It was without doubt the best investment I have ever made, not only does he work very hard, he now controls the lads and the monthly work schedules, he is a great manager and he himself is now earning a lot more than when he first joined me!

The moral of my case study is that yes I couldn't afford him when he started, but now, I couldn't afford NOT to have him. I go out gainning new work, running the business and he takes control of getting the work done. Ask him or my guy's if they would leave or go it alone, well I already know the answer and it don't beging with a Y.

I know its a big step when you do it for the first time but it really is worth doing if you sit down and plan it out.

If anyone wants any one on one help please feel free to email me. If you want to meet up and have a chat I am open to that to as long as we are not miles and mile apart.

I am no expert and never profess to be either, but I have gone through the barrier and lived to tell the tale?

Best wishes and good luck to everyone.

Trev

[Londoner]

My advice is DON'T do it. Far too many people see this as the natural direction to take and its not. Its the road to perditition.

I don't know you but I have been reading your posts for a long time and I have a fair idea of how you think. In many ways you think like me, you work hard but you value your independance.
One of the great advantages of this business is its simplicity. Once you start going down the staff and VAT route you lose that simplicity and you lose your independance.

And staff are a headache, they don't have your commitment, ( why should they ? ) and they will let you down.

Think long and hard about other options. Can you refine your existing round? put up prices? drop the rubbish?

One approach that might work is what I call the Superman / Clark Kent approach.

You have built up a good round with lots of nice customers at "reasonable" prices and you are Mr Nice Guy = Clark Kent. Its all very comfortable.

So start a separate round somewhere else charging top prices where you are Mr Hard Faced Business Man. = Superman, your alta ego.

Its strange but you can lead this double life even though you couldn't bring yourself to apply the same practices on your  existing round. Then when your start to build up your new round you can give away or drop your old customers. If you don't want to drop them tell them their windows are still pretty good after however many weeks it has been and suggest you extend the time between visits.
Most customers jump at this and it frees up time for your Superman round.