Ok this might sound boring, but its never too early to create a plan.
For those of you in established businesses, you will have to give me some slack and patience here, I know its the basis of a P&L account in its crudest sense, but it might just help someone who has never had to do this before.
Start by accessing your true costs, that includes all the time preparing, door knocking, talking on the phone etc not just the on site hours and the amounts you pay others.
Then think of the future costs, i.e advertising, vehicles petrol, insurance, training, equipment and materials that you think you will need.
Remember to escalate these costs according to your projected growth on a month by month basis for a period of 12 months
Now this is hard if you have nothing to refer to yet, however try and find something out in each category if you can, if you cant then just guess as its not too important at the mo.
Finally add a sensible profit say around the 20% or whatever you feel it should be.
At the same time do another 12 month period envisaging how many jobs you think you may get on an increasing scale including each type of job and the hours involved and any other type of profit centre like materials etc
Finally start multiplying the profit centers (hours/materials etc) by £ notes then deduct one total from the other, that will be your perceived income for the year (less your tax/ni etc) and should have a marked influence on your charge out costs, and a starting point.
All of this will be inaccurate at this stage, but will form the basis of your plan, read it every day, take it to bed with you, learn it off by heart.
Now the key to this is to RECORD EVERYTHING, every job, hours spent, materials used, unexpected costs and start to adjust your plan with these now known facts every day, don’t go to bed unless you do.
You can then see how far out you were and start projecting what you need to do to correct it before the mistakes have a chance to become a problem.
You need to get used to doing this as sooner or later your accounts will depend on it.
To the established amongst you who would post after this, BE KIND
Im frail!
DP.
