Mooloo's "Making my future, one stitch at a time"?

Hard_Up_Hester

When I did sewing for a local company I did piece work, so I was paid for each completed job, it was certainly an incentive to work fast.
Hester

Bobarella

Eager_Elephant wrote: »

Hope you can get your business back up and running.


Just a quick note before anyone panics - the auto enrolment for workplace pensions is only for staff who earn over £10,000 a year - I doubt most part timers working for small businesses will earn that.

Thanks that is very interesting. It would have applied to my full timer but not the others. The ad says if you employ even one person though. And says nothing about a limit. So not as much help as your post.

Savvy_sewing

re the cats. I have asked Biggest to find them a new place, and she is trying. The issue is that they want to have the cats back once they found a place to rent that would allow them.
DS and GF wanted the cats originally, so we weren't looking for someone else, they were supposed to have them when they got their new house. Then she changed her mind.
Biggest has been unwell this week, so I hadn't pushed her, but I will.

I took on the girl, on a months trial, so I think I am safe to let her go. She is willing, but not able. ( under an illusion she can sew I think, but when I inspected her work yesterday morning, I realised she really doesn't have a clue.
The third young woman is much more confident, is free lance, and will invoice me her time. So better for me. We will work week to week depending on what jobs I have on.
So I will write a letter, a cheque, and a good luck to the first one.
So the new Mooloo's staff consist of One lady who will do 10-2 mon to Fri. As old staff did, on the clothing side, and reception side,
Another lady out of retirement will sew 10 hours a week, mon, tues 2-5, and Wednesday 10-2. ( her choice of hours around her life). Then the newest lady will do 10-2 or so on Thursday/Friday.
That leaves me currently with Molly's daughter helping as and when on a Saturday, ( she works at Uni if I don't need her). And a lady who sews a bit, who will teach the knitting etc on a Tuesday 2-5 and available occasionally on a Saturday.
This is a huge step for me, but each had their qualities that they can bring to the shop to help enhance the business. (I hope).
I feel stronger about letting the other one go as in the two days she worked, 12 hours @ £6.50 =£78 I could get back £15 of funds. I have to redo the last job she did. 4 of those hours on a job I had only charged £20 and had spent 2 hours on already. I expected 40min at most to finish the job, and instead it was 4 hours and still not finished, and worse is I will need to undo and redo it all.
Now if that is not enough to toughen me up, nothing is!

Re Pensions, I will take advise, but two are already drawing their pension so don't know how that would work?
One is free lance, and the others are on a very low number of hours so by the sounds of it won't qualify.
Talking of pensions, I need to sort one for myself!
I started one in the pub days, stopped paying into it when I went bankrupt etc and have never reserrected it.

As paying myself hasn't happened yet, not been able too. But I am hoping that this will change eventually, but for now I am aiming to get the ladies settled, and be prepared for the increased work load that is happening week on week.
I am also considering taking payments up front for work, especially the jobs I have to buy accessories, fabric etc for.
Some people already offer and pay in advance. So I have started to accept their offer when it comes, and will now start to suggest it when giving a price. So I will say eg: Thankyou, that will be £10 for taking up your jeans, would you like to pay now, by cash or card? And hope it helps with cash flow, and that may reduce the number of jobs waiting to be collected, at the moment there is some £200 waiting to be collected, the rail is pretty full, and we are down to only 20 jobs waiting to be done.
My aim is to free up some of my time to do admin, website, photography, and make new things to sell on the website and virtual shops that I used before I had a shop front.
Phew!!
Today we are open 10-2. Hopefully a fee will collect, and pay, and we can work on the existing jobs.
DGD will come with me, armed with her newest DVD she is transfixed with Paddington.
Last nights lesson went well, and one lady who was part of my first set if lessons and brought an overlocker has booked to come in next week for extra lessons, paying by the hour for her and her daughter. Bonus.
The other overlocker has been paid for now, but the machine left will be another week.
But there is £665 in the bank, £180 in the safe, and as I said £200 worth to collect and approx £250 to do.
Then of course we have a level full of clothing to sell, and the sales from that are steadily improving.
Long long way to go I know, but this time last month there was only £16 in the bank.
Now I better get a wriggle on and use my time more productively.
While I can.

tootallulah

It all sound good Mooloo, onwards and upwards. Also I don't blame dgd for her obsession Paddington is brilliant.

Savvy_Sue

purpleshoes wrote: »

No one would find themselves in a hole letting someone go for poor performance if they only had a few weeks service. You have to be employed for two years to take someone to tribunal for unfair dismissal for example.

There is a very small number of exceptions to that which I don't think Mooloo should worry about. However ...

purpleshoes wrote: »

One thing every worker is entitled to is a written statement of terms and conditions within I think it is 13 weeks of starting employment.

Edited to add, its two months from starting employment, if you've been employed for a month.

And pretty much every worker, whatever sort of contract they're on, is entitled to paid holiday, proportional to the number of hours worked, and that includes anyone you're letting go very quickly.

Mooloo, the quick'n'easy way of doing it is to multiply their hourly rate by the number of hours worked and then by 12.07% to give their holiday pay.

I am not sure at what point you'd need to register as an employer, but that is worth some time on the HMRC website. You MUST keep good records from the start ...

The costumier you mentioned may well be self-employed and you're contracting work out to her, but I'd have thought everyone working in the shop would have to be employed by you, not self-employed, and that is all a bit of a minefield if you're not on top of it from the start.

Bobarella

Mooloo how interesting reading about your business. I have a cafe. It's been a strange week. This morning is utterly dead. I need to build up to £1055 by the 15th to pay rent & back PAYE contributions. As of today I have £560 towards it and 6 trading days to go. So it is doable. But I keep telling myself to be proud because before all this trouble started with the closure, I had to trade in my OD and considered available funds as my operating funds. So being this much in credit with time to spare is a good thing. At the moment I'm doing shorter hours that I can run myself. Some days I'm hitting the threshold of what I'd have made anyway once I'd taken £50 or £60 off for staff so I think it's been a good strategy.
On the pensions thing, I recently restarted contributions of £20 a month to an old company pension I had from 2011. They didn't have a problem with me restarting it. I can't afford more but equally I didn't feel happy knowing I wasn't doing anything at all.
Have a good trading day!
Bob

Bobarella

Sorry one final thing on your post above Savvy Sue - I was just working self employed for another business for 3 months. So long as you are genuinely self employed it's fine. You should check that a person has the right tax details to prove it. Also I employed a self employed chef. My accountant said it's fine but it's very important to prove they really are or the tax burden can fall to you.

Savvy_Sue

Bobarella wrote: »

Sorry one final thing on your post above Savvy Sue - I was just working self employed for another business for 3 months. So long as you are genuinely self employed it's fine. You should check that a person has the right tax details to prove it. Also I employed a self employed chef. My accountant said it's fine but it's very important to prove they really are or the tax burden can fall to you.

I don't really understand how you can have a chef who is self-employed, any more than you can have a shop assistant who is self-employed, because presumably you want them to work when YOU say not when it suits them, and you want THEM to attend rather than send a friend, but the HMRC Employment Status Indicator is the way to go.

It is perfectly possible to be self-employed in one role and employed in another. However Small Biz board is probably a better place for a discussion of good employment practices.

Bobarella

In my chefs case she had several roles. She worked the others around my hours. I was responding here because the topic came up. Sorry if I have broken any forum rules?

Errata

Bobarella wrote: »

In my chefs case she had several roles. She worked the others around my hours. I was responding here because the topic came up. Sorry if I have broken any forum rules?

I don't think you have, don't worry.
Sue's link isn't working so here's another one from HMRC on defining self employment https://www.gov.uk/employment-status/selfemployed-contractor