Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

(PS. Still no oil delivery. I rang them this morning to find out when it was going to be, they said they'd check and call me back. I rang back two hours later and they were still trying to find out - it definitely wouldn't be today but they are working tomorrow, so there's still hope for this week. I let them know that the tank is empty. Reading between the lines, I suspect the order got lost somewhere....).

cazmanian_minx

Apologies for the lack of scores on the doors yesterday but since it's the bank holiday weekend and the end of the month, I thought I'd do one big round-up tomorrow.

I had a bit of a brainwave yesterday - I need to put around £2k aside for the freight and VAT on my overseas orders when they're delivered in early May, so why don't I transfer it to my NatWest overdraft until it's needed? I'll pay 6% on the £2k, but save 19.9% on the NW OD so it kind of makes sense as long as NW doesn't drop my OD limit, which they've never done before. It's my year end tomorrow, so I'll do it after that.

I spent most of last night trying to find someone who'd make me bespoke packaging for my beads and failing dismally to find anyone who'll do cheap and cheerful, it's all 'luxury gift packaging' at £2 or more a box. I think I'm going to email the Tiny Box Company and see if they can help me. I want a square, flat box, measuring 20cm x 20cm x 1.8cm with a cardboard insert that splits it into 25 4cm squares - it's for packing alphabet beads (Q and Z can share!). I'll also want one about half that size for doing small jewellery-making kits, but I need to play around with some paper and glue and make a few mock-ups to get the size right.

I had a rush of blood to the head yesterday, stuck up an Easter promotion on my business Facebook page and begged all my friends to share it. Bless them, they did and as of 8.30 this morning 2,099 people have seen it I haven't had an order using the discount code yet, but I've got one new liker for the business page so I think I can count that as a success :beer:

cazmanian_minx

We had our oil delivery this afternoon

Mara_uk7

Typical caz, Just as the weather warmed up ! We turned our heating Off a couple of days ago and havent needed it back on yet !
Spent the afternoon sunning myself in a friends garden and we put the world to rights over coffee !!

cazmanian_minx

Don't hold your breath over the heating, Mara, the boiler won't fire up now! There's air in the fuel line I think - apparently resetting it and restarting a few times should work the air out of the system, but if it doesn't I'll have to bleed the fuel line (or probably I'll chicken out and ask Mr Minx to bleed the fuel line!!).

Anyway, here they are, week and month-end scores on the doors:

(last week/this week/ + or - amount)
Business
Overdraft: -£-6589.98 / -£6044.43 +£545.55

Business total: -£-6589.98 / -£6589.98 +£545.55

Personal
Overdraft: -£3542.44 / -£3668.71 -£126.27
Egg card: -£3115.00 / -£3115.00 no change
Barclaycard: -£2695.00 / -£2695.00 no change

Personal total: -£9352.44 / -£9478.71 -£126.27

Grand total: -£15,942.42 / -£15,523.14 +£419.28

Debt 28th February 31st March

Overdraft £3552.67 £3668.71 +£116.04
Egg card £3150.00 £3115.00 -£35.00
Barclaycard £2734.89 £2695.00 -£39.89

Total £9437.56 £9478.71 +£41.15

Seems I do need that extra £250 from the business account. Things are going so well with the business at the moment though that I don't really want to take the cash out. I'll have to think this one over.

cazmanian_minx

Hmmm, bleeding the fuel line didn't work - no fuel in it. The problem is caused by the oil tank being more or less level with the boiler rather than higher than it, so it's a git to get started once it's run dry. I remember this happening when we first moved here, the system had been drained as the house had been unoccupied for a couple of years. I'll give the heating engineer a ring tomorrow.

I've got most of my year-end stuff done for the business. I have four invoices to come in from suppliers and the VAT return to do, that's it. At the moment I owe HMRC less than £100 as a balancing figure so with a bit of luck the monthly direct debit will be reduced. Turnover is down on last year, as expected, but profit looks to be up slightly. I think I've managed to stop the rot in time anyway, as earlier this year I didn't think I'd still have a business by the end of it.

The balance transfer to the Nationwide card has gone through, but until I get my online banking log-in for Nationwide, I can't make sure I've calculated the BT fee correctly. Nice to see the old Egg card down to £415 anyway

And you can tell it's year end and I should have been in the office doing accounts-type-stuff - look how Finn's mane ended up yesterday :rotfl: (This was just before I took it out at the end of the day, it had been thoroughly rolled on and stayed put; not bad for a first attempt!)

abouttimetoo

Hi Caz

I was just wondering how you were getting on so thought I'd pop over and say hi

Wow, you are doing so well on the DF front and it's great to hear that your business is doing well again. At this rate it won't be long before we have you back on the MFW again :j

Regards
ATT

cazmanian_minx

Hello ATT, nice to see you again

The great news of today is that I HAVE HEATING IN THE ANNEXE AGAIN :j:j:j:j:j:j:j Jeff the heating engineer lives in the next village to the west, so he was able to pop over. Turns out I was absolutely right about the fuel line needing to be bled, we just loosened the wrong bit

The bad news of today is that my holiday at the end of the month with Mum and my cousin has had to be cancelled. Mum's partner has been in hospital for the past two weeks and although it looks like he'll be discharged this week, he's not going to be well enough for her to be away - he had encephalitic meningitis, which only about 8 in a million people get and 95% of them are under 10. The hospital had never seen it in an 86-year-old before and he nearly died, so Mum is naturally quite anxious to keep a close eye on him at the moment.

I could still go and spend a week with my cousin, but looking at the finances I think it's better to write off the money spent on travel (EasyJet flights are non-refundable and I don't think I can get back the train or bus fares either, though I'll investigate those) rather than spend the extra £200-ish on fuel, airport parking, meals out etc. etc. and it means I don't have to close down the business for a week either. If I could have spent half the week with my cousin and then half the week with Mum, I would have gone, but she says they won't be up to visitors even if I stay in a hotel, so I'll leave it for now and go and see her later in the year when he's feeling better.

Oh, and a nice piece of financial news - Mr Minx has made the last payment on his truck today, so he has an extra £420 a month to throw at his credit cards now (or a bit less, as he's paying the extra on the electricity bill!)

cazmanian_minx

I've had a rather lazy day - all the orders got packed and posted, I placed a stock order, changed the bed linen and stock checked some cabochons....and the rest of the day was spent playing Road to Rome III and footling around on Facebook.

Must do better tomorrow!

cazmanian_minx

Less Roads of Rome today (I've nearly finished it, so I'm rationing myself on the levels now!) and more work. I'm eying up some fantastic Czech glass beads done in neon colours that light up under UV - not seen anything like them before and I have a hunch they might sell quite well. But it's quite a big minimum order. Czech beads are usually sold by the mass, which is 1200 beads (abbreviated to HDZ - hundred dozen) and if I want the smaller ones, the minimum order is 5 HDZ per colour. So I think I'll have to bite the bullet and go for the bigger sizes to start with, which have a minimum order of 1 HDZ per colour. They do some great bead mixes as well, with a minimum order of 4kg per colour, I'm sure I won't have any problem meeting their minimum total order requirement (just waiting to hear what it is), but I need to remember that the prices are ex-works so I'll need to budget for a courier to go and collect it for me. I got a rough quote from TNT (the cheapest service I could find for European collections) and 5 boxes weighing 20kg each would be £125 + VAT door to door which really isn't bad.

Not much more to report other than I think the horses are about to be expensive - there is literally no small bale hay left in the far north of Scotland and I could really do with another 10 bales. I'm investigating Halleys Blox as a substitute, which works out rather cheaper than Horsehage and can be soaked in 5 litres of water to feed as a chop rather than left as a block, as I'm sure Merlin would stamp on his and scoff the bits in about five seconds...