Looking at going s/e, couple of questions

[rawesie]

Hi all
I've just been made redundant from the army, where i was a fully qual'd spark. Firstly id like to be a cheeky little beggar and ask if anyone has a decent all singing all dancing spreadsheet, or ideas for what i could include to make my own (not scared of excel, i studied computing at college in a different life). And secondly what is the going hourly rate in the north west, particularly around the Lancaster/Morecambe area.

Cheers

Dan

 

[Octopus]

Hi all
I've just been made redundant from the army, where i was a fully qual'd spark. Firstly id like to be a cheeky little beggar and ask if anyone has a decent all singing all dancing spreadsheet, or ideas for what i could include to make my own (not scared of excel, i studied computing at college in a different life). And secondly what is the going hourly rate in the north west, particularly around the Lancaster/Morecambe area.

Cheers

Dan

For what purpose?

 

[rawesie]

Bit of everything, general book-keeping, quotes, customer database

 

[Octopus]

Bit of everything, general book-keeping, quotes, customer database

Hum, you should balance the time you will spend maintaining all of these on seperate systems versus an integrated package.

For example I use Intuit Quickbooks Pro and if you have microsoft outlook it does everything a small business needs. The list price is around £300 BUT Costco were selling the 2013 version recently for about £130.00

I think you can download a sample version and have a go with it.

I have my estimates sent up in it with my business logo and the Elecsa logo too. It also have my invoices .... so if you create an estimate for your client in it, you can email the PDF to the client. Once you've done the work you can simply generate an invoice from the estimate, and email it too. You can set up all your suppliers in it and catagorise all your purchases so at the end of the year you can give a report to your accountant, which will save you money.

You should also look at computer packages for doing certificates, there are a few on the market and most can generate a PDF certificate which you can send to a client.

Plenty to think about.

Hope this helps.

 

[richy3333]

Quickfile is free but web based. If you're a sole trader, just keep a simple spreadsheet of incoming and outgoings for each month and keep all your receipts. Your accountant can do all the rest at the year end.

 

[rawesie]

thanks for the replies i will look into them, another thing i've thought of, what if anything do people have by way of t&cs, or disclaimers on quotes etc

 

[telectrix]

t&c's on mine. pay up or enjoy hospital food for x weeks, where x is a variable depending on how much is owed.

 

[rawesie]

do you have set scale for x or does it also depend how much of a tool they are?

 

[telectrix]

dually variable value as x depends on the amount and the number of days owing, and if they're a complete knob, the y factor is added into the equation.