[8weekly]

Nice one Lee. How do you sort out vat invoices? We've just started and it's a pain in the arse printing them all off. We're printing duplicates (off aworka), keeping one for ourselves and taking one to each job to deliver to the customer.
What do you do?
Cheers.
Ole

You don't have to give a VAT invoice for every job. You just need to be able to produce one if requested. I think. 

[Lee Pryor]

I don't expect anyone to understand why I would talk about one thing and not another. It's simply my choice. I don't need to justify that.

We don't do commercial work unless it approaches us and accepts our price

Isn't tlc cleaning a commercial business? I view commercial and residential as completely difference kinds of businesses.

[Og]

Nice one Lee. How do you sort out vat invoices? We've just started and it's a pain in the arse printing them all off. We're printing duplicates (off aworka), keeping one for ourselves and taking one to each job to deliver to the customer.
What do you do?
Cheers.
Ole

You don't have to give a VAT invoice for every job. You just need to be able to produce one if requested. I think. 

I hope so. What about sequential invoice numbers? Lots of our customers are vat registered. Just a few hundred residential wc jobs that aren't.
It seems we're generating a lot of paperwork unnecessarily.

What do you do Lee?

[JBC88]

Well done Lee it's amazing what you have achieved.

Even though you don't want to share certain details with everyone, the info you do share let's ever determined cleaner know it's definitely possible to grow a successful business like your level.

I've never heard of anyone offering cleaning packages before.
My questions are,  how do you get the customers to buy into these?
 Is the cost of additional services spread over the year instead of in one go?
 If so what's to stop the customer getting conny roof cleaned and cancelling 2 month later without paying full cost of conny roof clean?

Also you say you have 1 man to a van? Isn't it more financially viable to have 2men to a van?
What do you look for and expect in an employee?
I find it hard to get people to stay long term. It doesn't seem to matter how much I pay and I consider myself a fair employer,  they either don't like the job or start missing windows and skiving etc so I sack them in the end.
I get that they will never care about job quality like we would and most people don't dream of being a window cleaner but you and others manage to find decent people long term clearly. Is there any advice you could give us all here?

Hope you can answer these would be really helpful to me and other aspiring cleaners.

Thanks

[Delta]

I don't expect anyone to understand why I would talk about one thing and not another. It's simply my choice. I don't need to justify that.

We don't do commercial work unless it approaches us and accepts our price

Isn't tlc cleaning a commercial business? I view commercial and residential as completely difference kinds of businesses.

http://www.tlcwindowcleaning.co.uk
http://www.suffolkwindowcleaners.com/about-us.html
They do domestic mostly. Also I believe they have two bases unless they have moved all operations to Dencora Business Park.
Twice the size of your business but they have been trading for over 20 years.

[Stoots]

I would also hazard a guess uk window clean dwarf your company lee..

I don't know but they seem to cover a huge area  and are mostly domestic

Not that it matters but I'll bet there's a few others that go under the radar that  will be big operations

[Delta]

UK Window Clean are franchisors so in my opinion you can't really compare with the likes of TLC or Pryors.

[Stoots]

UK Window Clean are franchisees so in my opinion you can't really compare with the likes of TLC or Pryors.

Really? Are you sure?  I swear they have employees, unless the franchisees have employees...

I once had  a job interview with them a few years ago! They were defo employers then unless they've changed there model. Either way they are pretty big I would imagine.

[Delta]

http://www.ukwindowclean.com/window-cleaning-franchise.html

[Lee Pryor]

http://www.ukwindowclean.com/window-cleaning-franchise.html

When did this thread become a size comparison?

Franchises are a completely different business as are commercial companies.

I only compare us to other residential privately owned companies. Also size isn't how many vans you have, I could have 20 vans if they all did half the work. The only measure of size is money

[Delta]

I did say further up the thread:

"UK Window Clean are franchisors so in my opinion you can't really compare with the likes of TLC or Pryors"

[Lee Pryor]

I did say further up the thread:

"UK Window Clean are franchisors so in my opinion you can't really compare with the likes of TLC or Pryors"

I know

[Delta]

Many thanks for the confirmation.

[Stoots]

yes but they have employees as well that i know for sure

so will it be the franchisees that employ or can a company employ and franchise?

[Tom-01]

I don't expect anyone to understand why I would talk about one thing and not another. It's simply my choice. I don't need to justify that.

We don't do commercial work unless it approaches us and accepts our price

Isn't tlc cleaning a commercial business? I view commercial and residential as completely difference kinds of businesses.

http://www.tlcwindowcleaning.co.uk
http://www.suffolkwindowcleaners.com/about-us.html
They do domestic mostly. Also I believe they have two bases unless they have moved all operations to Dencora Business Park.
Twice the size of your business but they have been trading for over 20 years.

Oh so someone has already done it?

[Og]

Strewth. Does it matter?

[Tosh]

No. But to some it would appear so.

[8weekly]

http://www.ukwindowclean.com/window-cleaning-franchise.html

When did this thread become a size comparison?

Franchises are a completely different business as are commercial companies.

I only compare us to other residential privately owned companies. Also size isn't how many vans you have, I could have 20 vans if they all did half the work. The only measure of size is money

[Susan Dean (1stclean)]

http://www.ukwindowclean.com/window-cleaning-franchise.html

When did this thread become a size comparison?

Franchises are a completely different business as are commercial companies.

I only compare us to other residential privately owned companies. Also size isn't how many vans you have, I could have 20 vans if they all did half the work. The only measure of size is money

because most people on here think if you have more van out everyday you are making more money which isn't true at all , we had just 6 vans working at dhl years ago but we w ere making more then a fellow guy that had 15 out everyday it all about what left in your pocket at the end of the week when every thing is payed for

I myself would like to take a look at the day too day running of it all as having 3 vans out daily is hard work , we seem to build up to getting the 4th one just about there , then boom we bin aload of rubbish off and back to having three vans flat out and always running behind grrrrr

[Tom-01]

Strewth. Does it matter?

Nope.

It's just that there's already others doing it so it's not such a big deal.