Cleaning business

ellas9602

Hi
Another cleaning company thread!
my sis is an accountant and she has been made redundant. I work in IT and redundancy looks probable this year for me too so we want to try our hands at starting a cleaning business.
We want to research the idea further by actually doing it. We feel that if we can do enough marketing and offer 'tasters' to willing clients we can make a success, we're both hard working and trusting of the other so I guess my question is what do we need to have in place as a minimum to at least give it a try? I understand the PL insurance is a must. Do we need to be registerd as a business? Can we just call ourselves self employed initially?

Anything else? We feel that we have nothing really to lose by giving it a try and just want to get stuck in.

Any further advice would be appreciated - Thanks

talkinpeace

Are you willing to work for less than the National Minimum wage - as that is what the competitor companies make their staff do.
The maths is horrendous .....

you can each register as self employed and take it from there.
register a partnership will protect you both

keigcf

talkinpeace wrote: »

Are you willing to work for less than the National Minimum wage - as that is what the competitor companies make their staff do.
The maths is horrendous .....

you can each register as self employed and take it from there.
register a partnership will protect you both

Why have they got to work for less than the minimum wage? household cleaners around here are on £10/hour. Thats not bad pay:)

cavework

talkinpeace wrote: »

Are you willing to work for less than the National Minimum wage - as that is what the competitor companies make their staff do.
The maths is horrendous .....

Where the heck do you get your statistics from to post this rubbish?

cavework

Ok ignoring the stupid comment from talkinpeace.
1 .. Do you understand what is involved in offering a cleaning service?
2 ..Have you any idea about your costs? ie , will you be supplying the equipment , cleaning products etc? (it does make the job easier than using the clients
3 ... have you worked out an hourly rate to also cover travelling cost?
4...What if one of you is off sick, how do you cover?
5 .. How are you going to invoice? weekly , monthly and how do you wish to be paid ? BACS cash etc
Sorry to throw this at you but believe me it is not as easy as it sounds to make a decent living from a cleaning business ,

Mistral001

I cannot see this as an expanding market when times are tough economically for most people.

It is not a very well paid job as you probably know but if you are determined to go into it the one thing that customers value more than anything is trustworthness, so perhaps relying on doing a good job and building up a good reputation by word of mouth might work better than the marketing techniques which you are propossing which might work normally but some people might be a bit suspicious off when they are looking for someone to come into their homes and work for a few hours.

phill99

keigcf wrote: »

Why have they got to work for less than the minimum wage? household cleaners around here are on £10/hour. Thats not bad pay:)

But that is where you are showing naivety.

You maybe paid £10 an hour but you don't earn £10 an hour. Being self employed, you have to take from this your tax and NI. Then take out holidays that you don't get paid for, sick pay you don't receive, PI insurances, running a vehicle, equipment purchase, servicing and reinvestment, bad debts, accountancy fees, advertising and marketing, etc etc. So £10 per hour suddenly becomes £4.

Mistral001

phill99 wrote: »

But that is where you are showing naivety.

You maybe paid £10 an hour but you don't earn £10 an hour. Being self employed, you have to take from this your tax and NI. Then take out holidays that you don't get paid for, sick pay you don't receive, PI insurances, running a vehicle, equipment purchase, servicing and reinvestment, bad debts, accountancy fees, advertising and marketing, etc etc. So £10 per hour suddenly becomes £4.

This is quite true. But then there are cleaners and there are cleaners. The cleaner who is recommended by a friend who only "does for" one or two people for a few hours a week will often actually be able to keep most of the £10 her hour. They maybe do not earn enough to pay tax or full NI and they walk to their customers houses and use all the cleaning products provided by the customer. And those are the cleaners who declare everything! the point about the holidays pay still applies as you have described.

My point is that a business which I think the OP is proposing will actually be competing with maybe dozens or 100's of people as I described , but yet might have to pay all that phill99 describes - especially if they want to create a business that employs people.

BTW the point about holidays is important. The £10 has to be reduced to take into account the 28 days holidays you will not get. With regard to sick pay there is no statuary duty on the employer to pay for sick pay. All they have to do by law is to pass on SSP which is paid for Government. Self-employed can get SSP and it is at the exactly the same rate as employed people. i do not know how many cleaning firms have have sick pay schemes, my guess is very few, so perhaps sick pay not be an factor with regard to costs of the business. However if the OP is presently working for a frm that has a sick py scheme then it will be a factor perhaps in comparing their present salary with what they hope to get as self-employed.

Pennywise

You can't charge for your travel time, so if you're travelling between several homes in a day, maybe also stopping off to buy cleaning materials etc on the way, you'll find that you can't "work" a full day, so the potential of say 8 hours of work, suddenly drops to maybe 6.

That's why you may not earn minimum wage, even if you charge £10 per hour - you have wasted time travelling, and the costs of materials used, and that's before your overheads etc.

By the way, if the OP is in IT and sister is an accountant, why would you start a cleaning business, scratting around on minimum wage? An accountant could be earning £20 per hour doing basic book-keeping or easily £50 per hour doing tax returns or small business accounts. With IT and accountancy knowledge, you could relatively easily set up an accountancy practice with far higher earning potential than cleaning.

motorguy

cj087122 wrote: »

If you're doing a lot of driving, have you thought about getting a fuel card? if you're a new business you may struggle to get credit so try the Diesel Advance pre-pay card Dieseladvance.co.uk

What would be the advantage in paying for your fuel up front, given cash flow is likely to be an issue in the early days?

I would say £30 of diesel would cover a lot of ground per week, so maybe a pre pay fuel card is not top of their list at the moment?

keigcf

phill99 wrote: »

But that is where you are showing naivety.

You maybe paid £10 an hour but you don't earn £10 an hour. Being self employed, you have to take from this your tax and NI. Then take out holidays that you don't get paid for, sick pay you don't receive, PI insurances, running a vehicle, equipment purchase, servicing and reinvestment, bad debts, accountancy fees, advertising and marketing, etc etc. So £10 per hour suddenly becomes £4.

I have passed my accountancy exams and worked for 20 years so I do know! How have they got bad debts? I paid every time they came, if starting small and going on word of mouth why do they have marketing? Our cleaners around here seem to work in areas so travel is minimal, we provide all cleaning materials. Ok running a vehicle, they have a car. Its not all doom and gloom:) it depends on what they want to do, just themselves or run a multinational company employing others