Avon Hints and Tips (Part 2)

lozza1985

Placed my very first order last night - for £310 (plus some bits for us on top!) - emailed by SL to let her know, and was a bit cheeky asking if there was the possibility of sometime having a few more houses - she's replied saying when she's dropping me off some extra books, but no mention of the houses! Ah well, hopefully when she comes to see me later in the month she might mention it - are there any SL on here? Do you tend to leave it so long before giving Rep's extra houses? Or can you only have the ones you are first given? I've about 180 houses at the mo, which I know is quite a lot but we are very keen to make a good go at it which must be obvious as I keep emailing her to check on loads of things lol!!!

ellejay156

lozza1985 wrote: »

Placed my very first order last night - for £310 (plus some bits for us on top!) - emailed by SL to let her know, and was a bit cheeky asking if there was the possibility of sometime having a few more houses - she's replied saying when she's dropping me off some extra books, but no mention of the houses! Ah well, hopefully when she comes to see me later in the month she might mention it - are there any SL on here? Do you tend to leave it so long before giving Rep's extra houses? Or can you only have the ones you are first given? I've about 180 houses at the mo, which I know is quite a lot but we are very keen to make a good go at it which must be obvious as I keep emailing her to check on loads of things lol!!!

Lozza, you are lucky,

My first lot is 65 houses and I have been told I have got to wait a few months before they increase. Apparently normally it is 2 - 4 camps before they look at giving you more.

PamG

Hi all, I'm new to this site and to Avon. Not even put my first order in yet! I'm nearly finished collecting all my brochures and have about £175 orders. Offered my customers 10% off for the first order with me and kinda wishing i hadn't!!

lozza1985

Thought it would have to be a while! I was quite surprised at the number of houses - but I don't think there are many Avon ladies round here tbh - I know there is one a couple of streets away, but in the year I have lived in this house I've never had an Avon book and I know none of my neighbours have so have a feeling that my street hasn't had a Rep for ages. Have to be patient I suppose - if not I could always get my OH to sign up I guess!

lozza1985

But if you hadn't then you might not have had so many orders though! It's worth giving discounts/freebies to gain peoples trust and get regular customers. You don't need to do an offer every campaign, but every so often will help keep people interested. Maybe next time, do an offer where if they spend £20 or more then they get a free mystery gift? I did this and am just buying the shower gels that are on special offer - the naturals collection is also priced well, and if you give people everyday essentials it means that in future they might buy their shower gels from you which will add up to extra sales. At least that's what I'm hoping - I'm following suggestions that were on this thread

Bu}{erfly

Bu}{erfly wrote: »

Thanks dark_angel

As this is my 1st party...I'm hoping I did the right thing, as my SL has not given me any guidance
And I'm now worried, that I might have gone bit overboard:huh:

I just want to make a good impression and look prepared.
And don't want to be upstaged by the Ann Summers Rep that will also be at the party:cool:

Anyone with advice regarding hosting/having parties?
The do's & don'ts?

PamG

katchambers wrote: »

If you are concerned about doing your self-assessment by yourself, there is an excellent free workshop run by the HMRC, they take you through the forms step by step, they let you know what you can deduct and what you can't and you can ask questions, very friendly and very helpful, you also have all the paperwork to take home that you can refer back to when you actually do it for the first time. Here is the website, type in your postcode to find you local business link, then search for courses, click taxes as the topic and you are looking for HMRC Workshop
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk

If you don't have time or don't want to attend here are some ideas of the things that you can deduct meaning you will pay very little, no tax or even get a tax rebate:

How does it work? There are only a few boxes on the forms that you have to fill out, the most important being your sales, so keep records of all your receipts, and your expenses, keep a record of all those receipts too.

Example (someone who only does avon and no other jobs)
Avon sales (Apr 2008-Apr-2009) = £3600
Avon expenses = £1600
Avon profit = £2000

Tax Owed:
Personal allowance = £6100
Profit minus personal allowance = £4100
Tax paid = £0

Why? No tax because you have a personal allowance that you can earn tax free.

What about if you already have a job? The personal allowance is likely to be used up which means in the scenario above you would pay tax on the £2000 profit, which equals £440. That tax will then have to be paid by the end of January, and they will also charge you for half of next year in advance, so be prepared for that.

To make sure you don't have such a large profit of £2000 and such a large bill there are a lot of things you can deduct that you probably don't know about.

So using the example above, lets get the £3600 down to a lower figure:
1. Stock costs (around 70%) = £2520
2. Brochure costs (approx 16p each x 50 brochures per campaign) = £144
3. Freezer bags to hold brochures = £10
4. Internet costs (£10 per month) = £120
5. Petrol costs (40p per mile x 500 miles over year) = £200
6. Stationary (pens, pads, stapler, paper, envelopes etc) = £70
Above are the basics, but to get it down to a much lower figure, if you use a room exclusively for avon, say a study, or spare bedroom, you can deduct a proportion of the costs of running that running that room including electricity, heating, mortgage interest. The way you work it out is, I will use my house as an example, we have 3 bedrooms, lounge and kitchen, that's 5 possible rooms that could be used, I use one of those room exclusively for my self-employment which means I can deduct 1/5 of all my costs of running the house.
Lets say my electric costs over the year are (£40 per mth) = £480
Gas costs over year (£30 per month) = £360
Mortgage interest over year = £9000
Total costs = £9840
Now 1/5 of that (20%) is = £1968
Now if you add up all the previous expenses your total expenses = £5032
That means you will actually get a tax rebate as you have technically made a loss of around £1500.

*Just want to make a point that these figures are fictional and also the personal allowance is different depending on what tax code you are on, and the amount you can deduct for things like petrol changes each year so check to make sure you have the right figures as I am not a tax professional, just giving my tips.

HTH!!

Hi - I'm new to all this and my SL told me I didn't need to register for Tax purposes, however I work for government company so would rather do things properly. I have rung HMRC and they said I had to fill in a form to register for self-employment, plus an exemption form for the NI as I will earn under £4825 per year. He also said that this was completely seperate to my fulltime job, therefore I'd have to earn above that from the Avon before paying tax... Does this sound right? A lot of people are saying that it's in with full time job? I already pay tax on that though of course... HELP?!

lozza1985

My OH uncle asked his accountant for us (I do Avon, and we both do Kleeneze) and the accountant said, register for self-employed but it will count as separate to your full time job - so therefore in theory you may only have to pay NI contributions (not sure how much that is, but it isn't very much). If you save all receipts for tax deductable items (stationary, petrol if you use your car, brochures, bags etc) then if you do have to pay tax it wouldn't have to be very much - as detailed above. It does depend upon how much you earn with Avon I suppose.

Thats what we've found out anyway!

LozzaB

Ooooh, two Lozza's!! This could get confusing :rotfl:

lozza1985

Lol yeh!

We could have fun confusing people!!!!