Courier Business Stuff

Well you can serve any documents at the registered office address that’s registered with Companies House and they’re counted as being served whether they’ve moved or not. So that’s no problem.

Did you get any written confirmation of your booking? If it didn’t have the full company details on it then you should have a good case for making the sender personably liable anyway.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues, Late Payment, Legal Issues

It was Dale I meant, I don’t know the other guy. I didn’t know there’d been any problems with Dale – he always came across as a nice bloke.

Maybe I’m just an exceptionally bad judge of character, which means most of the people I’ve worked with on here are probably absolute c**ts and I’ve just not realised it.

I suppose there’s just a lot of courier companies and owner-drivers not making a go of it at the moment – with high fuel prices and the economic slowdown.

I’m surprised about Cotswold Couriers though – he seemed to be charging the right sort of prices to make a profit and he always seemed busy. It’s a shame.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues

wrote:
I think visit to the accountant is needed here

If you go to the accountant and they tell you not to register then get another accountant.

The only reason to even consider not registering for VAT is if you have a lot of customers that aren’t VAT registered.

Read this http://deliver-it.biz/couriers/2008/03/should-i-be-vat-registered/

Posted under Courier Financial Issues, VAT

I don’t see how you can complain that they all look similar. If everyone was to stop using ‘Network’ invoices and starts using Quickbooks you’d have the same situation.

Agreed that it’s a total ballache having the same company issuing two different invoices, pure stupidity really. If they’re going to send their own invoice then why raise the ‘Network’ invoice to start with? It’s easy to avoid the double payment problem though – just match the invoice against jour job reference or purchase order when the invoice comes in. You can only pay for each jon once, so the second invoice goes in the shredder.

I’m not sure what the “not technically legal” refers to, apart from the absence of correct business names on some of them. That’s just as common with companies’ own invoices though.
 

Posted under Accounting Systems, Courier and Freight Exchanges, Courier Basics, Courier Financial Issues

While we’re on this subject can I point out to all our suppliers that in future we will only accept invoices printed on mauve-tinted 100gsm laid paper and delivered by carrier pigeon.

With up to TWO supplier invoices to handle a day we really don’t see why we should accept invoices delivered in any other fashion.

Oh and you can stick your £40 late payment charges where the sun doesn’t reach because in our opinion a message on a chat page is service of our notice to you that this is how we require our invoices delivered. Despite this it goes without saying that delivery of invoices by similar means is unacceptable.

Posted under Courier and Freight Exchanges, Courier Basics, Courier Financial Issues, Late Payment

I guess you’ve received an invoice with VAT on it from someone awaiting registration? Just pay the original amount and tell them that you’ll pay the VAT when you get a proper VAT invoice.
 

Posted under Courier Financial Issues, VAT

lynyrd wrote:
what would be the fastest ever period going from starting a ltd company to shutting the doors?

last year 6 weeks, now another it seems?…..isnt it time the law got involved in this scam?

what actually constitutes “obtaining goods or services by deception”?

and if my booking form doesnt state “ltd” just who was I dealing with?…

This is exactly why recently formed limited companies, or in fact most limited companies now, are a bad credit risk. That’s why the banks demand directors’ guarantees before lending them money.

The Companies Act contains all sorts of get out clauses so that limited companies can act in a shonky way and get away with it – but if they get the basics wrong then the shield of limited liability is taken away from them.

If the booking form doesn’t contain their limited company details then they’re in breach of the Companies Act – which means that the directors should be held personably liable for any losses you suffer because of their breach.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues, Late Payment, Legal Issues

I can see where you’re coming from Simon but is there really any need for “fuel surcharges” when every transaction between us is negotiated separately anyway? People are free to adjust their prices to a suitable level at any time so why complicate things with a fuel surcharge mechanism?

The reason the likes of DHL and TNT apply fuel surcharges is to give them freedom to adjust their contractually agreed rates (and their published tariffs) to allow for increased fuel prices. If they didn’t have contractually agreed rates or published tariffs then there would be no need for the surcharges – they could just increase their rates instead.

By all means put a mechanism like this in place for your customers, and for subcontractors that work for you regularly on an agreed ‘pence per mile’ basis but please don’t encourage people to adopt this as a standard on here. Apart from confusing the hell out of everyone it will increase the amount of time spent on admin and increase those little disagreements where one party claims that a surcharge had been agreed and the other claims that it hadn’t.

I’ve just had an invoice from a ‘Network’ supplier who’s started applying a fuel surcharge on every job. I’ve no problem at all with him increasing his prices but his £20 minimum charge has now become £21.60 and the £181 job he did for me now costs £195.48. Call me picky but it’s a lot easier, and less likely to result in an input error, for me to enter £22 or £196 onto our systems.

So by all means PUT YOUR PRICES UP if you think that it’s right for your business but PLEASE don’t f*** about adding percentages onto every job.

Posted under Courier Financial Issues