Contract Xchange

Simon_M_2

IainLaff wrote: »

Couple of questions.

1. Does anyone know the phone number or email address of contractxhange, i am consistently failing the belarc hardware test but i am not being told why, it is a fairly high spec laptop and i need to know why it is failing.

2. The role requires you to cross sell appropiate British Gas products and for doing this i believe you recieve a comission. Is this comission the only monies you recieve or is this an extra to the monies you recieve for taking the call. In short is this a purely sales comission paid job?

On another note, i have spoken to both the self employed and VAT departments and they have reassured me on a number of occasions that any money earned through employed jobs have already had the taxes deducted and therefore would not be liable for extra taxes or VAT deductions. It is purely any money earned through self employed business or contracts.

Thanks for the help with my questions.

Iain

Iain, you need to double check mate. I will give you an example:

You need to register for VAT to work for this company, so the £1.20 per call will be subject to VAT, so you would invoice them for £1.02 plus VAT. The 18p will go to the tax man.

Secondly; if you have another job earning more than the basic rate of tax, currently £6035 then you will pay the basic rate of 20% on this second job http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/check-multiple-codes.htm, so the calculation is as follows:

You invoice for £1.20 per call, minus the VAT (18p) minus the basic rate of tax (20% - 24p) = net profit of 78p per call.

So as you can see IF you can do ten calls an hour your hourly rate would be £7.80, if you can do only 5 it would be £3.90 per hour.

Dial in the ongoing monthly costs it sounds pretty poor.

Regards Simon

taffy056

simon,

you don't have all the info with this, you also get commission for selling products also, for each product or upgrade you sell you will get £1, you have an opportunity to sell on almost every call, and the ongoing costs can directly be offset on the business, and any accountancy fees also.

income from other sources such as paye income is not subject to any more taxes than what you would paying already, you would be paying the basic income tax after your entitlement, but you will be making saving in other areas, such as not needing to run your car, or possibly own one, not having to pay to eat canteens etc, not having to waste up to an hour (maybe?) on travel back and fore to work, the ability to fit this job around your circumstances, its not a perfect job, but its one that doesn't cost a whole lot to run and to setup.

Simon_M_2

taffy056 wrote: »

simon,

you don't have all the info with this, you also get commission for selling products also, for each product or upgrade you sell you will get £1, you have an opportunity to sell on almost every call, and the ongoing costs can directly be offset on the business, and any accountancy fees also.

income from other sources such as paye income is not subject to any more taxes than what you would paying already, you would be paying the basic income tax after your entitlement, but you will be making saving in other areas, such as not needing to run your car, or possibly own one, not having to pay to eat canteens etc, not having to waste up to an hour (maybe?) on travel back and fore to work, the ability to fit this job around your circumstances, its not a perfect job, but its one that doesn't cost a whole lot to run and to setup.

Taffy, I am sure this job would be good for some people. I just don't like the claims that you can earn upto £12 per hour, which in reality I don't think you can. To do this you would have to take 12 calls per hour (this is because of the VAT you will invoice at £1.02), so that's one call every 5 minutes, this is assuming you put the phone down and immediatley pick up another call, again I don't think this is possible. I would suspect 6 calls an hour is more realistic. Think how many times you have called up a utility supplier with a problem, you are ususally on the phone for 10 minutes or so.

So lets assume you have 6 calls an hour and work a 20 hour week for them:

6 x £1.02 = £6.12 per hour over 20 hours this equates to £122.40 per week or £489.60 per 4 weeks.

Now take into account your monthly costs, they require you to have a business phone line the cost can be found here http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/btbusinessProducts/displayProduct.do?productId=BTB-4965

So that's £14.37 line rental per month (This is net of VAT as you will be able to claim the VAT back)
Livechange - £34.08 a month (this sounds like a net of VAT figure)
PaySource Direct fee - £11.62 a month (this sounds like a net of VAT figure)
Accountants fees around £50 per month (this is required to do your quarterly VAT returns and yearly tax returns.
Use of home office £2

Total monthly costs - £112.07
Gross profit £489.60 minus monthly costs = £377.53 minus 20% basic rate of tax (£75.51) leaves you a take home of £302.02. This assumes you have another main job and have used all your tax free allowances.

So in reality you will be earning a net hourly rate of £3.78.

Of course this figure could be bumped up if you upsell products and earn your extra £1, however I suspect that you would probably only do this on one in 15 calls.

If you have any information to the contrary please let me know.

Regards Simon

mstopham

Simon_M wrote: »

Taffy, I am sure this job would be good for some people. I just don't like the claims that you can earn upto £12 per hour, which in reality I don't think you can. To do this you would have to take 12 calls per hour (this is because of the VAT you will invoice at £1.02), so that's one call every 5 minutes, this is assuming you put the phone down and immediatley pick up another call, again I don't think this is possible. I would suspect 6 calls an hour is more realistic. Think how many times you have called up a utility supplier with a problem, you are ususally on the phone for 10 minutes or so.

So lets assume you have 6 calls an hour and work a 20 hour week for them:

6 x £1.02 = £6.12 per hour over 20 hours this equates to £122.40 per week or £489.60 per 4 weeks.

Now take into account your monthly costs, they require you to have a business phone line the cost can be found here http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/btbusinessProducts/displayProduct.do?productId=BTB-4965

So that's £14.37 line rental per month (This is net of VAT as you will be able to claim the VAT back)
Livechange - £34.08 a month (this sounds like a net of VAT figure)
PaySource Direct fee - £11.62 a month (this sounds like a net of VAT figure)
Accountants fees around £50 per month (this is required to do your quarterly VAT returns and yearly tax returns.
Use of home office £2

Total monthly costs - £112.07
Gross profit £489.60 minus monthly costs = £377.53 minus 20% basic rate of tax (£75.51) leaves you a take home of £302.02. This assumes you have another main job and have used all your tax free allowances.

So in reality you will be earning a net hourly rate of £3.78.

Of course this figure could be bumped up if you upsell products and earn your extra £1, however I suspect that you would probably only do this on one in 15 calls.

If you have any information to the contrary please let me know.

Regards Simon

Hi Simon,

The only information I can give you to the contrary is that it is entirely possible to do 12 calls+ per hour in Customer Service roles. I was averaging 13 an hour at NTL, we were targeted at 12. So doing 11 or less consistently meant the boot (or retraining). A girl in my team was always at 15+ an hour sometimes hitting 20.

So with proficiency and/or dealing with queries properly (I suspect some of the higher call takers "fobbed off" their customers to an extent) and assuming the flow of calls is there I do not envisage 12+ calls an hour to be impossible.

And lets face it if you are trying to utilise your spare time to make money, even £3.78 an hour for talking to someone on the phone isn't the worst thing in the world when you are in the comfort of your own home and dictating when you do it.

I do agree with you though that the figures they quote are merely that, they are not earnings until all costs and tax is taken into account.

taffy056

Nope the reality is I am doing 6 calls an hour now, after 6 days, a person I trained with who has worked in call centres before did 59 calls in a 7 hour stint. And lets assume you are working full time hours please as most people who will do this will be!

all figures above are inclusive of VAT, you can can do your own vat without an accountant as you will only have one stream of income.

And you will be taking 10 calls an hour before a month is over, also you are not dealing with the utilities at all, you do not need a business line as you are not making any calls from it so any second line will do.

And coming from a sales background, with the clients coming to you statistically you can get a much higher rate of sales in 1 in 15.

While I appreciate your input you are making to many assumptions, of course anyone going into this should make due diligence on whether its worth doing for themselves.

Simon_M_2

taffy056 wrote: »

Nope the reality is I am doing 6 calls an hour now, after 6 days, a person I trained with who has worked in call centres before did 59 calls in a 7 hour stint. And lets assume you are working full time hours please as most people who will do this will be!

all figures above are inclusive of VAT, you can can do your own vat without an accountant as you will only have one stream of income.

And you will be taking 10 calls an hour before a month is over, also you are not dealing with the utilities at all, you do not need a business line as you are not making any calls from it so any second line will do.

And coming from a sales background, with the clients coming to you statistically you can get a much higher rate of sales in 1 in 15.

While I appreciate your input you are making to many assumptions, of course anyone going into this should make due diligence on whether its worth doing for themselves.

Hi Taffy, thanks for the reply. How many sales have you made to date?

taffy056

I made 2 today, and those are my first ones, but there is a reason for it, and that is I have not been asking the questions upto now as its a lot to take in, and I want to make sure I am doing things correctly, and I had 30 calls for 5 hours today, so okay your stat of 15-1 holds true, but some of those calls we were not allowed to ask for various reasons.

Its a work in progress and I can't see why we can't achieve 12-15 calls an hour, its quite feasible once you can navigate the systems they have in place.

bing0

taffy056 wrote: »

I made 2 today, and those are my first ones, but there is a reason for it, and that is I have not been asking the questions upto now as its a lot to take in, and I want to make sure I am doing things correctly, and I had 30 calls for 5 hours today, so okay your stat of 15-1 holds true, but some of those calls we were not allowed to ask for various reasons.

Its a work in progress and I can't see why we can't achieve 12-15 calls an hour, its quite feasible once you can navigate the systems they have in place.

Hi Taffy,

I've been following this thread with interest,and what comes across more than anything is your total honesty.

So for what you've said and for what you are doing,I'd just like to say .......

:T WELL DONE YOU:T

selyoh

bing0 wrote: »

Hi Taffy,

I've been following this thread with interest,and what comes across more than anything is your total honesty.

So for what you've said and for what you are doing,I'd just like to say .......

:T WELL DONE YOU:T

I second that

giohreg8905tnsdgogi

1st post help!

When I log in to contractXchange I see lots of large red blocks instead of the menu options...it is making things impossible to use.

Anyone got any ideas what is going on?

I have contacted the livetext...no help
cleared the cache....no help

anyone else suffering the same issue?

Thanks


using IE8 beta but have tried this in `compatabile mode', tried using Opera, tried using Google Chrome.

Flummoxed