Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

£550-something banked, loads of proofreading done, new fly rugs have arrived for the boys (I haven't got them yet, they're in the boot of a friend's car en route from the tack shop!) and she's only charged me £42 for the pair and I managed five circuits of this month's starting fitness assessment (5 x press ups, 10 x sit ups, 15 x broom pull-ups, repeat as many times as possible in 20 minutes). I am going to be feeling this tomorrow....

cazmanian_minx

There appears to have been some miscommunication over what I should be being paid for proofreading, as I've just received an email telling me I should be invoicing £2.50 a file rather than £4.00. Since I'm invoicing on the Excel template they asked me to use, downloaded from their website with the rate put into it by them, I'm hoping this is some sort of administrative error at their end rather than I've downloaded the wrong spreadsheet

If it is a mistake on my part and I've got to go back to £2.50 (which will slash my earnings this month because I'll need to take out the amount I've overcharged), then I'm going to have to seriously think about stopping doing the proofreading, because I'd earn more typing for them; the rate, as long as it's reasonably clear audio, works out around £9 an hour for me because I can type around 98 words a minute.

Bit worried I love doing this job, but I'm not sure if on £7.50 an hour I wouldn't be better off putting the time into the beads

DebtFree2012

When will they tell you? That's terrible on their part either way! Isn't it clear on their website?

eco_farmer

hello have been lurking a long time and am a big fan. just thought I'd post as it occurred to me that the 7.50 an hour is purely "profit" can you say the same with beads on a consistent basis? just a lill question whilst watching mary berry............


eco

cazmanian_minx

DebtFree2012 wrote: »

When will they tell you? That's terrible on their part either way! Isn't it clear on their website?

I guess it'll all get sorted out tomorrow when they're back in the office - the operations manager emailed me to give me a heads up, which was nice of him. You'd think they might have spotted it on the previous invoices though, after all, this is, I think, the third proofreading one they've had from me. Obviously it was the first one big enough to raise eyebrows! The rates aren't given anywhere on the proofreading website, just a link to the Excel invoice template, which is what I've been using, which is £4 a file.

The person I do most work for, the one I get on Skype with, said she was raving about me (in a good way!) to the boss in her annual appraisal the other day, so fingers crossed that even if there is a SNAFU with the invoice template, they might decide I'm worth the extra £1.50. I know what they charge their clients and what they pay their typists and although their overheads must be pretty huge, given they have a central London office, I don't think an extra £1.50 a file would dent their profit margins *too* much...

eco_farmer wrote: »

hello have been lurking a long time and am a big fan. just thought I'd post as it occurred to me that the 7.50 an hour is purely "profit" can you say the same with beads on a consistent basis? just a lill question whilst watching mary berry............

Hello, thank you for de-lurking :) The beads varies, when it's going well it works out around £11.50 an hour, currently it's probably about £7.50, hence why I've been concentrating on the proofreading.

Plan C is that there's a vacancy for PA to the Director at Mr Minx's place of work with a very, very good salary attached, but if I were to apply and get it (unlikely, to be fair), it would give me a big dog-sitting headache, because she couldn't be left on her own during the day.

cazmanian_minx

Oof, it's been an up-and-down day. The bad news is that I will not be getting £4 a file in future. It's been discussed at the company this morning and they've offered to meet me half way at £3.25 for last month's work, but from now on I either have to go onto the standard proofreading payment (which is about to be overhauled because they admit that it's not written down anywhere in a clear format) or join the full-time proofreading team on an hourly rate. They've asked for my thoughts, but since they haven't told me what either the overhauled ad hoc structure will be or what the hourly rate is, I can't really make any decisions at the moment.

On the plus side, I got an email from a friend of a friend today asking if I could type up an 88-minute interview for her this afternoon. I quoted £40+VAT an hour, which was accepted, so I had a pleasant five hours rattling out a celebrity interview I've had a couple of big orders which I need to pack and post tomorrow and the stock has arrived for the four-figure European order, so I can send a PayPal invoice through for that as soon as I've opened it and checked it's all there.

Not sure I'll have time to do scores on the doors tomorrow, but I'll catch up on Saturday if I don't.

LAM2011

A bit disappointing about the rate drop but I suppose its still better than nothing and something you can do at home and in your own time. And at least your own business is bringing in money too.

cazmanian_minx

Late scores on the doors ahoy

Business
Overdraft: -£-8,590.00 / -£8,450.00 +£140.00

Business total: -£8,590.00 / -£8,450.00 +£140.00

Personal
Barclaycard: -£500.00 / -£500.00 no change
Nationwide card: -£2,305.00 / -£2,305.00 no change
Halifax card: -£5,640.00 / -£5,580.00 +£60.00

Personal total: -£8,445.00 / -£8,385.00 +£25.00

Grand total: -£17,035.00 / -£16,835.00 +£200.00

And down into the £16ks we go :D This week has also seen me go past 15% of the business overdraft paid back :T:T I have sent an invoice to the celebrity interview lady, fingers crossed she thought my work was good enough to recommend me to friends, as word of mouth in journalist circles travels fast, for good or for bad!

The European lady has paid for her order, so that needs packing up tomorrow ready to go out on Monday, along with another 18 that are waiting to go from eBay. That's another £110 off the business overdraft straight away on Monday morning

The slightly less good news of the last couple of days is that I've had my draft accounts through from my accountant and yet again I managed to withdraw more from the bead business than I actually made in profit and yet again, profits were down. Net profit before depreciation this year was £13,714 vs £15,984 last year and the profit margin was down by 1%. So I think from now on, I really can't afford to take out more than £1,000 a month, which is going to make things a bit tight, especially with the proofreading money going down. With the new amount, I'm currently at £215.79 for the month for proofreading, plus they sent me some typing yesterday - not quite sure what rate I'll get for that because it was media transcripts, which I don't normally do, but worst case it'll be £23.85. Then there's £58.67 due from the invoice I sent today, but that's 30 day payment terms, so may not come through until September.

DebtFree2012

Chin up Caz, better now than later but I'm gutted for you. Congrats on sub 17k too. Very inspiring!

cazmanian_minx

Ssshhhhhhhhhhhhh. Be very quiet. I've got something to show you, but if you're noisy you might scare it away....



It starts with a 2!! It hasn't started with a 2 for donkey's years!! As you can see from the 'Available' column, it's not going to start with a 2 for very long (big supplier payment and eBay fees both waiting to clear), but it's a very big step in the right direction.