Further to this post about people moaning about red tape, I can confirm that it takes less than an hour to file your year-end PAYE return. I just did it: about 30mins reviewing everything last week, waited for HMRC to send printer-friendly P60 forms, then 20mins today actually printing off all the P60s and letting QuickBooks submit the P35 online.
Plus, HMRC are still paying small companies (<50 staff) to file on line. This year, they pay us £150 to file online, which is pretty reasonable for less than an hour's work.
Wednesday, 2 May 2007
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Feefo.com
Noticed this on Charles Tywhitt's website the other day: "independent user feedback from Feefo.com".
Feefo is doing very much what I described in this post. Gathering customer feedback on behalf of a supplier, aggregating it, and then providing reports/tools for the supplier to use on their own website. They are currently focussed on suppliers of products (like shirts) rather than services (like fixing taps), but the concept is the same.
At the moment, though, they have very few suppliers signed up, and of course getting critical mass of suppliers is as important as getting critical mass of feedback.
I do, though, really like the way that, once you have submitted feedback, they ask you to offer feedback on **any other company you have ever used**. So you could offer an opinion on your local butcher, or on you cable TV company. Feefo then (presumably) find some contact details for that company and tell them "hey, Bruce Greig says your company is great / mediocre / sucks. To get more useful feedback like this, you should consider signing up to Feefo". Great example of word-of-mouth marketing.
I struggle to find enough time to really get my head around what we ourselves want to do here. Certainly something. Question is exactly what, and with whom. We are talking to one other player in this space, who is working hard to provide really good solution to this problem, and we will back them (with time and effort, not money) and see how it pans out. I think.
Feefo is doing very much what I described in this post. Gathering customer feedback on behalf of a supplier, aggregating it, and then providing reports/tools for the supplier to use on their own website. They are currently focussed on suppliers of products (like shirts) rather than services (like fixing taps), but the concept is the same.
At the moment, though, they have very few suppliers signed up, and of course getting critical mass of suppliers is as important as getting critical mass of feedback.
I do, though, really like the way that, once you have submitted feedback, they ask you to offer feedback on **any other company you have ever used**. So you could offer an opinion on your local butcher, or on you cable TV company. Feefo then (presumably) find some contact details for that company and tell them "hey, Bruce Greig says your company is great / mediocre / sucks. To get more useful feedback like this, you should consider signing up to Feefo". Great example of word-of-mouth marketing.
I struggle to find enough time to really get my head around what we ourselves want to do here. Certainly something. Question is exactly what, and with whom. We are talking to one other player in this space, who is working hard to provide really good solution to this problem, and we will back them (with time and effort, not money) and see how it pans out. I think.
Wednesday, 25 April 2007
Identical handymen
Reviewed an application from a pair of identical twins today. Fascinating. They were applying as a unit. Everything on their (one) application form applied to both of them (except, obviously, their first names; plus one small element of their employment history).
Unfortunately, they were applying for central London and didn't have bike licences. Plus nearly all our work is solo work and I did get the distinct impression they were at their best when working together.
But they'd do well if they set up on their own. Assuming they are good, everyone who used them would talk about it to their friends.
Unfortunately, they were applying for central London and didn't have bike licences. Plus nearly all our work is solo work and I did get the distinct impression they were at their best when working together.
But they'd do well if they set up on their own. Assuming they are good, everyone who used them would talk about it to their friends.
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
New office
I almost forgot - we finally moved into our very swanky new office at Battersea Reach last week, I'll post some pics shortly. Seamus has now converted all of us to using gym balls instead of chairs, so we do look a little, ah, eccentric.
Real Business Hot 100
Real Business this month has their annual list of 100 fastest growing profitable companies, the Hot 100. I find this list reassuring for two reasons:
(1) we could nearly be on the list and (2) we aren't on the list.
Entry-level growth rate to get a spot on the list is just shy of 60% per annum (spot 100 is occupied by Eynsham Group, at 57.6% annual growth). Our 37% annual growth over the same period (last three years) is pretty respectable (very respectable if you take all revenue under the 0800handyman brand, i.e. include franchisee revenue, then you are looking at 63% growth per year).
But I definitely wouldn't want to be growing at the 100-300% growth rates exhibited by the top 30 companies. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Why is fast growth per se so sought after? Will it really make much difference to how big that company is in ten years time? Surely they are just going to grow super fast for a few years and then spend a few more years recovering. Better to grow steadily for ten years than race along for three only to be overtaken later by someone who has everything much more under control.
Hare or tortoise? Tortoise gets my vote every time.
(1) we could nearly be on the list and (2) we aren't on the list.
Entry-level growth rate to get a spot on the list is just shy of 60% per annum (spot 100 is occupied by Eynsham Group, at 57.6% annual growth). Our 37% annual growth over the same period (last three years) is pretty respectable (very respectable if you take all revenue under the 0800handyman brand, i.e. include franchisee revenue, then you are looking at 63% growth per year).
But I definitely wouldn't want to be growing at the 100-300% growth rates exhibited by the top 30 companies. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Why is fast growth per se so sought after? Will it really make much difference to how big that company is in ten years time? Surely they are just going to grow super fast for a few years and then spend a few more years recovering. Better to grow steadily for ten years than race along for three only to be overtaken later by someone who has everything much more under control.
Hare or tortoise? Tortoise gets my vote every time.
Pricing insurance
Every year our accountants, who are otherwise very good, try and flog us insurance to protect against the risk of paying them to represent us if HMRC decide to investigate our tax return. (I presume, by the way, that our accountants try and flog this insurance to all their clients, and it's not just that they think we are especially likely to suffer an HMRC investigation).
This year, because I couldn't be bothered to try again to explain to our accountant why the insurance is such poor value for money, I just wrote them a cheque.
But it is poor value for money. It costs about £300. Not enough to really spend too much time fussing about, but it still irritates me that our accountants can't assess correctly whether it is good value or not.
Likely professional fees we'd incur if we needed our accountant to represent us in an HMRC enquiry would be max £5k. So I'd need to expect the probability of a tax enquiry to be around 0.06 (300/5000) for this £300 insurance to be good value. I can't find any good numbers on the proportion of corporation tax returns that get investigated, but it can't possibly be 6%, it must be far less. And most investigations are, as I understand it, risk-based not random, so chances of a well-run company like ours getting investigated have got to be pretty slim.
Anyway, I put all this to our accountant last year. His response was pretty astonishing. He thought the insurance was very good value "because, Bruce, two of our clients have had investigations this year, and they were really glad they had the insurance, they thought it was very good value."
That's like saying that lottery tickets are good value, because someone who won the lottery said so.
As I say, our accountants are really very good. But I do get annoyed about little things like this.
This year, because I couldn't be bothered to try again to explain to our accountant why the insurance is such poor value for money, I just wrote them a cheque.
But it is poor value for money. It costs about £300. Not enough to really spend too much time fussing about, but it still irritates me that our accountants can't assess correctly whether it is good value or not.
Likely professional fees we'd incur if we needed our accountant to represent us in an HMRC enquiry would be max £5k. So I'd need to expect the probability of a tax enquiry to be around 0.06 (300/5000) for this £300 insurance to be good value. I can't find any good numbers on the proportion of corporation tax returns that get investigated, but it can't possibly be 6%, it must be far less. And most investigations are, as I understand it, risk-based not random, so chances of a well-run company like ours getting investigated have got to be pretty slim.
Anyway, I put all this to our accountant last year. His response was pretty astonishing. He thought the insurance was very good value "because, Bruce, two of our clients have had investigations this year, and they were really glad they had the insurance, they thought it was very good value."
That's like saying that lottery tickets are good value, because someone who won the lottery said so.
As I say, our accountants are really very good. But I do get annoyed about little things like this.
Thursday, 19 April 2007
Apprentice cowboy gardeners
I watched last week's episode of the Apprentice earlier this week. I'm talking about the episode where Sugar gives the teams £200 to use to build a "business" in a day and bring back a profit.
The winning team spent the day basically conning residents of Richmond into getting some gardening done ("Hello, I am from a gardening company, I have a team of five gardeners ready to ..."). There followed chaotic scenes of mowing wet grass, hacking away at hedges, mistaking roses for brambles, etc. Appalling, to suggest that good "business" involves offering a service you are quite unqualified to provide and charging for it nonetheless.
And they only made £190 in the whole day, between 6 of them. About £30 each. Less than the minimum wage! (The losing team was even worse, making I think £60. £10 each.) And Sugar in the debrief made out they had been really successful, and that their performance showed that you still could, in this day and age, set up and run a "business" with very little start-up capital. Surely they would have been better off just each going to a temporary employment agency and working as labourers / kitchen hands / warehousemen for the day? Or (as James in our office suggested) buying cold drinks and coolbox and selling them in the park (something you see often in American public parks, I've never seen this in a British park).
Trouble is, these are not "12 of the best entrepreneurial brains in Britain" (or whatever the intro voiceover says). They are just 12 people who the producers think will make good TV.
I am a big fan of Sugar, but I don't think this programme does anything for the image of "business" in the UK.
The winning team spent the day basically conning residents of Richmond into getting some gardening done ("Hello, I am from a gardening company, I have a team of five gardeners ready to ..."). There followed chaotic scenes of mowing wet grass, hacking away at hedges, mistaking roses for brambles, etc. Appalling, to suggest that good "business" involves offering a service you are quite unqualified to provide and charging for it nonetheless.
And they only made £190 in the whole day, between 6 of them. About £30 each. Less than the minimum wage! (The losing team was even worse, making I think £60. £10 each.) And Sugar in the debrief made out they had been really successful, and that their performance showed that you still could, in this day and age, set up and run a "business" with very little start-up capital. Surely they would have been better off just each going to a temporary employment agency and working as labourers / kitchen hands / warehousemen for the day? Or (as James in our office suggested) buying cold drinks and coolbox and selling them in the park (something you see often in American public parks, I've never seen this in a British park).
Trouble is, these are not "12 of the best entrepreneurial brains in Britain" (or whatever the intro voiceover says). They are just 12 people who the producers think will make good TV.
I am a big fan of Sugar, but I don't think this programme does anything for the image of "business" in the UK.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
