Courier Business Stuff

Can’t be arsed keeping up to date with employment law nowadays Mick – except as it relates to our business – and I’ve no intention of ever employing anyone again.

There’s no discrimination issue though, unless he can claim that he’s being discriminated against because of his, sex, colour, religion, race, sexual orientation, age or disability. Being thick doesn’t count as a disability so you can discriminate against him.

Kate, you should ask all employees to keep a record of their mileages anyway, to satisfy the tax man. As Jerry mentioned, there are some serious tax implications if he uses the van for personal journeys. Under HMRC rules he’s allowed to use the van to get to and from work and for VERY OCCASIONAL personal use – the Revenue example is using it once or twice a YEAR to take rubbish to the local tip – without incurring a tax liability. Otherwise he has to pay tax on the benefit of personal use of the van. It’s not much this year but from April he’ll have to pay tax on £3,000 pa for the van and £500 pa for fuel. That increases his tax bill by £770 pa. As you’re operating his PAYE it’s up to you inform the tax man of the extra liability. If you claim that he doesn’t have use of the van for private journeys you have to be able to prove it to them. Show him this to underline the point: Tax on vans.

Have you thought about fitting the van with a tracker?

Posted under Employment

£400 headlights from Manchester to London – tried to pay for the headlights and the delivery using stolen credit card details from a bloke in Eastleigh. Take care.

Posted under Courier Scams

Surely it just means “I’ll call you back if we want you to do the job”. If we then leave it too late and you get another same day delivery to do, then that’s tough on us for being indecisive.

We get probably only get 1 in 5 of every same day courier jobs that we quote on to end users. Do you think the other 4 ring us back and tell us that XYX Couriers have given them a better price? If you’re ringing round for insurance or whatever do you make a point of ringing all the companies you don’t go with and thank them for the time they’ve spent on your quote?
 

Posted under Courier Basics

It’s a bit odd to actually be asked directly whether you want to make a voluntary disclosure. Is this letter particularly addressed to COURIERS on the FRS? Maybe they’ve realised that there’s a lot of couriers making a particular error? Contra-charged invoices are quite common in the courier industry and could easily be handled wrongly under the FRS if someone didn’t understand the issues. It could be as simple as that.

I’ve emailed you.

Posted under VAT

I had one years ago, filled it in and got a letter back saying they wouldn’t be requiring any information in future. Our turnover wasn’t high enough or something.

I suppose they could be compiling statistics on small businesses as well now though.

Posted under Uncategorized

I’ve no idea. Have they even published the Regulations yet? Your scheme would probably pass the ‘workplace’ test and possibly the ‘public place’ test.

I was reading somewhere that there’s been less than 20 prosecutions so far in Scotland under their legislation.

Posted under Legal Issues

Good or bad?

A) Is it informative, helpful, a useful tool to establish relationships with other members (please DON’T Mike & Kate) and one of the main things that differentiates ‘Network’ from the other exchange sites. Or..

B) Is it a destructive and disruptive forum that encourages ‘Witch-hunts’, ‘Naming & Shaming’, cliques, petty vendettas and wastes both our time reading and contributing and ‘Network”s time monitoring and Big Brothering?

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges

It would be better if the subby could set their own default payment terms on the system – which would also appear on their directory entry. That way anyone sending a job confirmation to that member would have agreed to their payment terms. No argument possible.
 

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Late Payment