Small business advice

paulwf

Once customers start paying you for the work done then you will be blamed for anything that goes wrong. It doesn't matter what the business sector is or the rights or wrongs of the situation or the legalities etc, if you're taking the money and the customer isn't happy they will take it out on you!

What that means in practice is that you will have a customer asking for their money back or compensation and on the other side you will have the "employee" claiming they did a perfectly good job and demanding you pass the money on to them.

Of course you could take out insurances, take legal advice and get watertight contracts in place with your contractors but personally I'd just take finders fee and not be a middleman.

motorguy

paulwf wrote: »

Once customers start paying you for the work done then you will be blamed for anything that goes wrong. It doesn't matter what the business sector is or the rights or wrongs of the situation or the legalities etc, if you're taking the money and the customer isn't happy they will take it out on you!

What that means in practice is that you will have a customer asking for their money back or compensation and on the other side you will have the "employee" claiming they did a perfectly good job and demanding you pass the money on to them.

Of course you could take out insurances, take legal advice and get watertight contracts in place with your contractors but personally I'd just take finders fee and not be a middleman.

I would agree with this totally.

Also, i'd be looking at ways of getting your finders fee either as part of the handover of the job information or very quickly.

I suspect you'll end up getting the jobs for people but struggling to get paid.

I think theres a whole can of worms here to be honest. You're most likely going to be offering the services of the unemployed, the unskilled and those who have no inclination to stand over their work OR paying for public liability insurance or taxes.

And you're going to end up fronting this.

irn_bru

All valid concerns but this isn't a grand scheme to build an empire. I only work with people I know as I'm aware of how vulnerable the set up is. It's not a business model anybody will get rich on.

Just wanted to check up on the legalities.

motorguy

irn_bru wrote: »

All valid concerns but this isn't a grand scheme to build an empire. I only work with people I know as I'm aware of how vulnerable the set up is. It's not a business model anybody will get rich on.

Just wanted to check up on the legalities.

Good luck with it!

Let us know how you get on.