Something different.. starting self employed

[Plumberswife0112]

Hi All,
So something may be slightly different to the usual posts and looking for some advise or whether anyone has been in a similar predicament and how have you overcome it.
I’m a wife of a heating engineer - who has recently started out full time (2 years ago self employed 15 years experience), he made the decision due to customer demand - with a good customer base on his side.
In this time, he has employed an apprentice (which was initially when the COVID grant was favourable. However due to the f up of the college he never met a particular criteria and therefore never received it). Anyway safe to say no support for taking on apprentice. And also, taken on a subcontractor
His reasoning for this is, it helps to support him in getting jobs done quicker, due to how busy things can get. However, with all this comes increased costs insurances, gas safe etc which in turn puts strain on charge out rates and being competitive in the area, pricing has been looked at - with my accounting background however, every month there seems to be delays in customers taking forever to pay despite being chased etc, sometimes jobs overrunning compared to quoted etc.
It’s taking a strain on my husbands mental health dealing with the running of everything, the quotes, the jobs, the training, the costs etc. and is close to packing it all in - which I don’t think he should as he has come so far already!
I have offered to do quotes etc for him but he said I wouldn’t understand what would go into the quote from him just saying - which is understandable - I already do his books.

What I’m trying to achieve here really is, is there anything that anyone has gone on - such as a business management course that has helped or whether there is anything as a wife I could look into and help with that May be useful? Before he actually packs it all in for a less stressful life!

 

[Murdoch]

Despite what your terms are, customers will pay you when they want is my experience. The most important thing for a small business is CASH in the bank so that slow payers are not costing you money.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Welcome to being se if he’s that busy try increasing your hourly / daily charges and devote a half a day to quotes / book work

 

[Knappers]

I'm working on trying to get some decent separation between work and home and trying to spend some quality time completely away from work.
Divert to answer machine and put it all down over the weekend.

 

[Deleted member 120897]

Disclosure: not something I have used or experience in, but PB plumber uses it, Maybe some software like tradify?

 

[Ric2013]

He could discuss quotes with you before issuing them. Tell customers he'll get the office to quote as he needs to discuss with business partners, take the pressure off when in front of a customer. Or might just result in arguments?

But if you know jobs end up costing more, you apply a f up factor, also known as a profit protection margin. Basically, you calculate a figure and add a certain percentage to ensure the business remains viable in the long run. I'm not sure this is shown on the formal quotation, probably the labour is simply over-estimated to cover for th inevitable, but I used to work for a UK distributor for a European HVAC manufacturer... our typical contract was for about £50,000... and this system of applying a percentage or a fixed extra price was what was keeping the company from going under. We didn't disclose that we were doing it, but I think it's normal.

 

[IND_Nick]

Morning,
The scenario your husband is in, is very common, normally good tradesmen struggle with running a good business as it is a totally different set of skills. They just work more and more hours, it goes back to the 'work smarter, not harder'.
When I started up I was really lucky that a mate of my dad's was a business coach. He sat me down and went through everything, basically start with how much you want to earn, how many days you want to work and then you have an idea of what you're aiming for.
Most tradesmen are too cheap and worried about turning down work. I'd rather have a diary 75% full of well paid work than 100% of crappy jobs that just pay a day rate. The extra space in the diary is where you get all the other stuff done, quotes, stock, qualifications, sorting van etc.
If you do a quality job, with quality materials everyone benefits and the customers who can't see this are often not worth bothering with, and bad payers.
As always it's easier said than done, but hopefully you can pass some of this on. The main benefits of being self employed should be time with family, flexibility and no boss!

 

[oz-plumber]

Anyone self employed has gone through and probably still going through what you're going through.

-Under quoting jobs.
-Dealing with delays on jobs.
-Waiting for payments
-Dealing with employees -from general issues to ability to pay wages / entitlements.

One day I woke up - after many years of sleepless nights and decided to make a change - or die from stress.

I just stopped turning up to jobs that were behind on payments.
Payment Terms were stated in the quotes / contracts.
If they were beyond the quoted or contracted terms, no further work was going to be done.

It went so far as the home owners, project managers, builders, architects, site foreman were calling me to get back to complete works due to us causing holdups on the jobs.

I gave them all the same story - pay up what's due and we'll return.
They broke the contractural agreements, due to non payment, so I have no obligation to continue works.

Long story short:

• I walked away from a few jobs.
• I got paid up to date for quite a few jobs.

out of those I got paid up to date for, some I kept going. Some I walked away from due to payments terms not being
adhered to and no guarantee that that payment terms will be adhered to as per quote / contract.

Basically, the way the building industry works, is that you want your invoices put at the top of the pile, to be paid.
If you're not in that put in that category, you will wait for payment until you are required, or whenever they have enough funds to pay you.

Side note: get a mobile credit card payment device and take it with you. Invoice small jobs and take payment on the spot.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Also don’t let anything go past a 5k bill on start up

 

[Murdoch]

Agree stage payments before starting jobs .............

 

[Plumberswife0112]

Can I just say, thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to reply! I wasn’t expecting replies at all! The information provided is very useful and I’ll be putting it forward to my husband to use. Some stuff we do but May be things like staging payments etc is something we don’t and could work well for big jobs. Also turning down the crappy jobs that take about a month to pay! Honestly thank you
Although, I don’t wish this particular stress on people it’s nice to know we are not the only ones to have experienced this.

 

[Plumberswife0112]

I'm working on trying to get some decent separation between work and home and trying to spend some quality time completely away from work.
Divert to answer machine and put it all down over the weekend.

This is the biggest task to conquer eventually I think!

 

[Plumberswife0112]

Morning,
The scenario your husband is in, is very common, normally good tradesmen struggle with running a good business as it is a totally different set of skills. They just work more and more hours, it goes back to the 'work smarter, not harder'.
When I started up I was really lucky that a mate of my dad's was a business coach. He sat me down and went through everything, basically start with how much you want to earn, how many days you want to work and then you have an idea of what you're aiming for.
Most tradesmen are too cheap and worried about turning down work. I'd rather have a diary 75% full of well paid work than 100% of crappy jobs that just pay a day rate. The extra space in the diary is where you get all the other stuff done, quotes, stock, qualifications, sorting van etc.
If you do a quality job, with quality materials everyone benefits and the customers who can't see this are often not worth bothering with, and bad payers.
As always it's easier said than done, but hopefully you can pass some of this on. The main benefits of being self employed should be time with family, flexibility and no boss!

Well said!!! I completely agree with everything mentioned here! I did also point out that se should also have benefits and what’s the point if benefits can’t be reaped eventually!

 

[Plumberswife0112]

Also don’t let anything go past a 5k bill on start up

I never let a £70 service invoice slide before, purely on principle of the company thinking they could get away with small business owners doing there job “for free” no sirrrryy!