What's a fair payment for holiday cover?

skintchick

I hope this is the right board for this question.

I have a friend who runs her own children's music group twice a week.

It is held at our church, so she pays a tithe (ten per cent of the group income) for the room hire for each session, but there are no other overheads than her petrol and parking.

She has recently begun asking me to cover for her when she is away. This is a bit of an honour as she has never trusted anyone else to do it for her, so the group has simply not run when she was away, but now she has me to cover for her, she goes away more frequently.

My issue is with what she pays me. When she first asked me to do it, I had no idea of her take as I didn;t know what she paid out. Obviously I do now.

So at that point I agreed to her rather vague offer of £25 a session plus someting extra if it was a big group that took a lot of money. It is a drop-in group so the nunber of people varies but it's a popularr group with a fairly solid following. It runs twice a week.

I've done it twice now and have two more booked in. The last two times she has given me £30 - and she acts like it is giving pocket money to a child. Seriously, she asks me to tell her what I spend it on!

For the sessions, I have to do all my own planning of songs, although obviously I use her instruments, etc. And I have to set up and tidy away so it is about 90 mins in total.

This week the group took £78 but I still only got £30 - previously if she went away she got nothing but now she is taking £40 for doing nothing - and more than I am getting.

I feel it would be fairer for me to a percentage, of maybe 60 per cent of the takings.

But I'm worried about losing a friend over it, and whether I am just being greedy.

Can anyone help? Do you run a similar type of business and what do you do about paying cover?

I do really enjoy doing it but I feel a bit taken advantage of. She is quite naive and ecccentric so it won;t have occurred to her that I might feel like this!

Annisele

So, takings were £78, and then before anybody paid any tax the church got £8 (ish), your friend got £40, and you got £30. To decide whether that's fair, some of the things I'd think about would be:

If you'd had to buy or hire the instruments, how much would that have cost you? (I mean that as a serious question; if each child has a tambourine that cost 50p in a car boot sale, the group is cheaper to run than if they all have violins).

How much administration / advertising does she do?

Are you sure that petrol and parking are her only overheads? I'd expect something for insurance at the very least.

How much goodwill is in her business? If you set up a rival business tomorrow (not suggesting for a moment you should actually do that!) how easy would you find it to get clients?

If she'd had to hire somebody else as an employee, how much would she have had to pay that person? I've no idea what the hourly rate for a music teacher is, but the £30 you're getting is a fair bit more than minimum wage.

whitewing

She must have insurance. Plus she'd have to spend time dealing with enquiries. She would also have had to grow the business so may still be covering for time when the business was small, plus less busy times etc.

If she is part of a franchise, she may have royalties to pay.

What about CRB checks? Did she pay for yours (assumed children are involved).

CKhalvashi

There are so many hidden expenses that go behind the scenes of running any business it's beyond belief; I don't think it's as simple as she's taken £40 for doing nothing.

Does she have advertising, cost of instruments, space hire, etc, to run?

Does she employ bookkeepers to do bits for her?

One of mine pointed at me the other morning to ask why we charge our team £300/wk + 40%, to which I lovingly pointed to her car, the office, and mentioned that maybe over the course of a year, she may go through £20-30,000 of staff time, plus a lot more in space hire etc., and that she is one of the few 'non-employed' now (as in she leases the vehicle and equipment from another company, and makes the payments to two separate entities).

£30 for a few hours work isn't bad IMO.

CK

skintchick

She is covered by the church insurance. She doesn't do any advertising, not even posters, she's been doing it 21 years and in this town word of mouth is very good. I know because I run a group of my own. I have a CRB check already which covers me. She makes her own business cards. She also makes her own business cards do no real costs there.

I could easily set up a rival group although I wouldn't. The instruments are shakers and I have my own actually. It's a song with mum group doing traditional nursery songs, not a franchise though other similar groups in the area are.

I think that answers all the questions Thanks for the relies so far.

paddyrg

£20/hr - doesn't sound too bad for pin money, about twice what agency would cost. That 21 yrs of business goodwill is worth rather a lot, and it sounds like it was built up over 20 yrs of not having a holiday. She also bears the business risk and owns the client list. What her business takes/makes is up to her, what she offered you (£30) is up to you - take it or leave it!

InsideInsurance

How much do you think a bank or insurance company makes from its call centre agents it pays £15,000 a year?

You need to look at the job you do and the skills it requires and the times its run at. From that you get an hourly rate, times it my the number of hours it takes and there is your income.

You shouldnt be looking for a profit share arrangement unless you are also looking to share some of the risk and investment too.

If you're getting £30 for 90 minutes work I suspect most would consider £20 an hour a fair rate for what you are doing factoring in the ad hoc nature of it

bris

She is the employer, do you really expect to make more than her. £30 for 90 mins seems more than fair to me, but if you don't like it, you can always refuse to do it and let her find someone who will appreciate a bit of spare cash.

phill99

If you think it's that easy, you go right ahead and run your own business.

sequence

Is she paying your tax or are you paying it as self employed ? Could be storing up trouble. It probably takes an hour to do the planning on top of the work. So only about £12 an hour less tax. So if you enjoy it's probably not that bad of a deal, but if you don't....

ohreally

skintchick wrote: »

It is held at our church, so she pays a tithe

The amount she tithes should demonstrate what her takings were (before you became aware).

She certainly doesn't sound naive to me.