Running a business in Britain, page 3
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- Miss twelve bins and it is in the paper. Seven years, one customer, a price you cannot change, and a published count of the collections you missed. Nothing in this trade is won by selling.
- Two ships at sea and nowhere to land. Two ships at sea, every port closing, and a year of customers' deposits legally repayable inside a fortnight. What March 2020 did to a cruise operator.
- Open all night, by order. The fuel earns pennies, the toilets earn nothing and the night shift loses money by order. The food, the lodge and the chargers pay for all of it.
- Twenty-nine suppliers in eight months. The bank balance looked healthy because it was full of other people's money. Why twenty-nine energy suppliers failed between August 2021 and the spring after.
- Twenty-five days a year. A stadium earns on about twenty-five days and pays out on the other three hundred and forty. The capacity it may sell is a number the council writes, and can reduce.
- The April the payroll bill jumped. A care home where nothing changed except the payroll. Roughly £2,500 a head more for exactly the same shifts, against a council rate set the previous winter.
- The winter is when the work is. Nine weeks carry the whole year and none of them can be repeated. What a theme park does in January decides whether Easter happens at all.
- Fixtures you are given. A racecourse does not choose its dates, its runners or the weather. The money comes from the race being televised, and prize money is what buys the horses to fill it.
- Selling theatre time to surgeons who do not work for you. The surgeons are not employees. They are granted privileges, they fill your theatres, and they can take their lists and their patients somewhere else next month.
- Buy trains, then wait for a tenant. A leasing company owns trains and never runs one. The whole return sits in what happens when a lease ends and the next operator does not want the fleet.
- The VAT threshold is a cliff, not a slope. The £90,000 test runs on a rolling twelve months, not your year end. Most people who get caught out were looking at the wrong number.
- What your first employee actually costs. The salary you agreed is the smallest line in the calculation. Employer NI, pension, holiday and insurance all land on top, before anyone is productive.
- Profitable businesses go under every week. The profit and loss says you made £40,000. The bank says you have £1,800 and the wages are due on Friday. Both are correct, and only one of them can pay.
- Your bank manager is a person with a target. A facility review is not a formality and your bank manager is not the decision maker. Knowing what the credit function sees changes how you ask, and what you get.
- How to choose where to open. The cheap unit at the end of the parade is cheap because nobody walks past it. Rent is the second question. Who goes by, and why, is the first.
- Reading a commercial lease before you sign it. Full repairing and insuring means the roof is yours. A break clause you cannot satisfy is not a break clause. Read these five things before the pen comes out.
- Pricing is a decision, not a calculation. Your first price becomes your ceiling, and the customers who choose you on price are the ones who leave on price. Costs tell you the floor and nothing else.
- When to stop doing everything yourself. You are the constraint. A manager costs margin and buys hours, and the business only survives the trade if you actually let go of the things you hand over.