Thoughts please??????

[Chee]

Hi chaps, ok I'll keep this as short as I can. I'm self employed and repair plant & machinery. Although I am always doing fabrication, welding & repairs to cars, vans etc. i spent ££££ on diagnostics etc. I took a huge interest in painting when I was 18 and paid to be taught how to and to get some qualifications. I'm 25 now and find I'm doing so many different things I'm having to spread myself very thin (if that makes sense) to get by and as a result productivity suffers.
So I'm going to have to focus on a particular part and drop the rest to an extent, I am leaning towards doing vehicle repairs, engine overhauls, restorations, bodywork which still involves welding and fabrication work in there.
The machinery repairs are ok but it's usually 90 days to payment and it's not really exciting me anymore.

Any thoughts? Does anyone on the forum do similar work? If so how do they find it?
Thanks

 

[the snooper]

one guy on here, ian autocare has just given up on repairing (welding) vehicles he found it hard to make a living from it

 

[Chee]

Really? Ok not great but iv got the diagnostic work and bodywork to keep things ticking. I'll need to look into it a bit more but iv had enough of running all over the country for non payers & late payers. Although I do have a couple of good reliable customers, it's not cutting it at the moment!

 

[F.J.]

I am in exaclty the same boat as you work wise. The majority of my work comes from machine and plant repairs and i also repair vehicles and genral fabrication and also bespoke fabrication. My trade is building/repairing trucks and trailers and converting them to customer specs. When i started off i struggled quite a bit because of the 60 days end of month contract with the machine repairs but now the cheques come in regularly (after a few phone calls to the purchase ledger department) and on top of other work i am quite pleased with how my first year trading has gone.

I have always worked from my dads yard (hes a self employed builder) but have gradually out grown it with the amount of work i do, as like yourself i wont turn anything down! I am lucky that i can rely on my dad to help out at times although he thinks he can take over and tell me how to repair and make things the way joiners/builders do!!!

In my opinion i would stay with what you are doing, dont put all your eggs in one basket that way you will always have a steady flow of work. If things get too much where you think you cant put the amount of effort into a job as youd like then im sure you must know someone that you could sub it to and make a cut on it in return?

I am moving into a large workshop in March and this will help me get back into building/converting trucks again (havent done any for a while due to size of my current work space) which will give yet another form of income!

Good luck
Dean

 

[gavuk]

I would have thought it is easier making real money spraying and diagnosing electrical problems than glueing metal to rust unless, its classic renovation or custom/show cars....hope it works out for you

 

[Wedg1e]

I would have thought it is easier making real money spraying and diagnosing electrical problems

A lot of what I do is diagnosing electrical/ electronic faults on x-ray systems. The trouble is that a lot of the equipment is so old the guys who built it are dead, there are no spares and often not much service info to give you a head start.
The strange thing is the attitude most (it seems) companies have, where they come over all bewildered when you tell them you can't fix their 45 year old system as there are no more parts. They don't seem to be able to grasp the concept that if you had a 45 year old telly or car, it'd be much the same situation if they broke.
I used to regularly go to Goodyear Tyres in Wolverhampton. They had one system for inspecting truck tyres that was three x-ray systems in one big cabinet. It was upwards of a three hour drive to get there, a minimum hour to pinpoint the fault and when time after time it was down to the same issue it got a bit disheartening. We'd tell them that if they gave us the system for 2 days and spent perhaps £5K on it, we could pretty well guarantee no breakdowns for a year. Their response was that we could charge them £1000 a day every day and it would come out of the running costs for the plant, but to get £5K was a capital expenditure issue that would mean financial meetings, Director-level authorisation... they closed the plant and moved it to Eastern Europe, and no bl00dy wonder.
Meanwhile we charged them £1000 a day...

 

[Shox Dr]

As said don't stop avenues of work. Maybe increase your rate that would stop some one the shifty jobs. If you can't turn them down.

As for payment term. It's your invoice it's YOU who make the terms not them

 

[madkayaker]

Any Tom dick or Harry can splatter enough pigeon poo and body filler to a vehicle to pass mot (no offense to those that do high quality vehicle work) and as such people will only pay small amounts of money. Stick at what your doing and start engineering out the faults on X-ray kit to get it working again!

 

[astro_al]

Just put your prices up, that'll sort the wheat from the chaff and you'll be no worse off / possibly richer and have more spare time.

Al.

 

[Wedg1e]

As for payment term. It's your invoice it's YOU who make the terms not them

Funny that: I'm sure we tell our clients what our terms are and they still pay when they feel like it... - and the bigger they are, the worse they are.

 

[awemawson]

On your quote, and also on your invoice, put a clause to the tune ' Terms strictly 30 days interest will be charged at bank rate plus 10% on outstanding balances over 30 days.' Then at 60 days issue a supplementary invoice for the interest. You have to make the interest rate higher than they are charged by the bank <G>

 

[madkayaker]

There Is a standard rate for interest on commercial invoices 2.5% above base rate comes to mind. Big firms know that there is little you can do over late payment so will insist on long terms

 

[Wedg1e]

There Is a standard rate for interest on commercial invoices 2.5% above base rate comes to mind. Big firms know that there is little you can do over late payment so will insist on long terms

It gets worse: some big companies now ignore the fact that we work to an ISO quality scheme and are BSI audited regularly, and insist that we conform to THEIR quality scheme in order to secure contracts! Cheeky b*&%$d$.

 

[Chee]

This is what I find at the moment, the larger companies don't care about my terms they expect me to follow their terms, which is hard for a small business!

 

[madkayaker]

Try and avoid the "can you do the job and we will sort a purchase order later" my lot are 120day term after signing of the purchase order and marking the line complete. Last month it took three weeks to raise a purchase order for a length of cable tray!

 

[MattF]

Just put your prices up, that'll sort the wheat from the chaff and you'll be no worse off / possibly richer and have more spare time.

That was the motto of a chap I used to work for. "It's the jobs you don't do which make money", he used to say. Due to the fact that the way he phrased it was a tad weird, it took me a while to figure what he meant, but it equated to what you said above; Get rid of the time wasters as they cost you money rather than making you money.

 

[pedrobedro]

Just put your prices up, that'll sort the wheat from the chaff and you'll be no worse off / possibly richer and have more spare time.
Al.

A friend's family own a carpet shop and his theory is it's better to do one job at full price for someone who pays than two for people who want it for nothing. They never seem short of work and only sell top quality goods.

 

[astro_al]

It's the closest thing to a plan with no drawbacks that I have ever come across...

Al

... But it's amazingly difficult to implement! Takes courage.

 

[MattF]

... But it's amazingly difficult to implement!

Ain't that the truth. When I used to do customer work, I managed it by introducing a callout charge. That charge was dropped if they accepted the quote and had the work done. but I made sure people whom I hadn't done work for before, or people whom I knew could be erratic, thought they were paying something one way or the other regardless. The time wasters quickly disappeared, and most people never actually got charged the callout, unless I actually did something minimal when I got there, and then the callout charge would just become the token labour charge, but just the thought of it deterred the muckers.

 

[rambo]

My dad had a print finishing company. The normal terms within the industry were 90 days(3 months ffs!!, imagine telling an employye to wait 3 months), anyway, he would only do 28 days.

Quite a few companies used to say 'company A does 90 day accounts, so should you'.
Use company A then, my dad would say, they never did.