The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: July 2008
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Morning, I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know that it was just the pub kitchen that was damaged, restricting our purchases to drinks rather than trendily expensive chips.

I thought I would go a little into the internal workings of Gabem over the next few weeks, hopefully shedding a little light on Umbrella Companies in general. Today I am going to cover a small part of the invoicing process, what happens with hours we receive from agencies and companies.

Those of you that have been with Gabem through multiple agencies are probably aware that for some agencies we need you to call in your hours, and others you don't have to worry about it. This has nothing to do with any preference of ours, it has everything to do with our trying to work as easily as possible with the companies you are working with.

I would love to say that the majority of the lists that we're sent are just copied automatically onto our system, but due to the volume of different lists formats we get that's a minority of cases, everything else is still entered by hand and triple checked. We're still in pursuit of the perfect system but so is everyone else, we'll let you know when we find it.

There are about two weeks left of the recommend a friend special that's mentioned on the front page, so if you have a friend that wants to join one of our Umbrella Companies so you get £50 each there is still time.

In the meantime have a great weekend, hope the weather holds for you all.

Hugo
25/07/2008

Good afternoon, and posting a day early to make up for missing one completely last week. Everything was going well today, the sun was shining, the birds were singing then the worst happened, "The Halfway Bridge" pub, our local, caught fire. We're not sure of the damage yet, but the staff here are in shock, I'm sure your thoughts are with us at this troubling time. I am going to distract myself in the meantime writing news that might interest you.

By now you should know about one of the upcoming changes we've made, and for those of you in the construction industry it's good news. We've started taking advantage of the Government's "Construction Industry Holiday Scheme", meaning that each of you that work within the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) will take home a bit more each time you're paid and when you take your holiday you will get more because you don't suffer NI on the payments. That is all unless you have opted out.

We estimate that it's going to average out to about £4 extra per week after tax (although that will change depending on tax codes and a variety of other factors), half immediately and half when you take holiday, that's the equivalent of knocking off half an hour early on a Friday on top of that, it's money you don't have to do anything extra for. As far as we are aware we're the only company making the effort to take advantage of this, if we're wrong please let us know.

I will be creating a letters section over the next few days where you can read any of the documentation we send out, including the holiday scheme letter I've talked about here.

Any comments or suggestions you have are always welcome, especially if they would help improve our service, so feel free to get in touch by clicking on Hugo below.

Hugo
22/07/2008

Good afternoon from deepest, darkest West Sussex. The clouds are piling in after what has been a glorious day here so we are looking at a change in the weather tomorrow.

Talking of change, we hope you have noticed that "Susan's Legal Bits" has been updated. Sorry it's late but Susan has been busy with running refresher courses for the staff here (exciting topics like "money laundering", and ensuring people know which insurances we have and how they benefit you).

Her post covers a couple of topics this month - expenses and contracts. The section on expenses is based on a question that one of our members sent in and we hope that it's informative for all of you but if you have any questions don't forget that our Customer Service team here are always happy to answer any specific queries.

Here at Gabem everyone is very excited about a number of new payment methods that we are currently working on. We will be letting you all know about these over the following weeks and months. These significant developments will impact all of us here as well as being very positive for all of you so I will be asking some of the departments including IT and Customer Service, to discuss the changes in more detail in future blogs.

If you have any suggestions or comments for future posts please feel free to email by clicking Hugo below.

Hugo
16/07/2008

Friday has come around again, and I am sorry you're stuck with Hugo again. Lynne will be back to chat in the near future, but in the meantime she is still eager to hear any suggestions from you for our "Bottom Line" magazine.

I realise this is somewhat early, but I have been asked by the Finance team to remind you that the deadline for paper submission of self-assessments has moved to the 31st of October, electronic submission is 3 months later on the usual date of 31st January. It's quite a big change, but probably the sort of thing that you are all aware of. I would expect some less than subtle reminders starting on 1st November of our self-assessment electronic submission service.

I thought I should mention something entirely unrelated to umbrella companies which may affect you. There is a viral email going around (viral as in malware, not viral as in amusing pictures). The subjects are along the lines of 'Third World War has begun,' '20000 US Soldiers in Iran,' and 'US Army crossed Iran's borders' the body of the email contains a link to a malicious webpage designed to infect your PC with a trojan. Just don't click the link, and don't forward it to anyone else. Here is an article about it if you want to read further.

To finish on a positive note, Tesco and Sainsbury's are both running money off petrol schemes based on how much you spend in store, I think at the moment both are offering 5p off per litre if you spend £50, worth bearing in mind considering the extortionate fuel costs at the moment.

Anyway, hope you have a great weekend and that the weather improves for you all. As usual click Hugo to make a comment or a suggestion.

Hugo
11/07/2008

July is upon us and hopefully the Gabem umbrella is the only one you are going to need after last year's wet and woeful summer.

Here at Waterside we are in for a busy few months with many changes afoot, the first of which is the appointment of our new Marketing Director, Steve Girdler. We are always seeking new ways to develop and diversify our business for the benefit of our members and I'm sure Steve will be instrumental in this- we all welcome him aboard!

As part of the Client Relations team at Gabem I spend most of my day in communication with our agencies and companies, to ensure everything is running smoothly. However I have recently become involved with our seasonal magazine "The Bottom Line", with which some of you may be familiar. Essentially this is a platform to keep you informed of any changes in legislation or procedures and address issues we feel are relevant to you, as well as throwing in some fun stuff and competitions. Having started work on the latest edition, I got to thinking that seeing as it is your publication, we don't want to fill it with stuff that you will neither have the time nor the inclination to read! Therefore we would really welcome any suggestions for discussion topics, articles or competitions. Basically anything you would like to see in there (within reason!), just click here to let us know.

Well, that's all from me, have a great week and let's hope for some sunshine

Lynne, Client Relations

Well it looks like we will be delaying Susan's Legal Bits for a week (she is after all a busy lady), but we should have a one for you by next Friday, it may even cover two topics as we did receive a suggestion on Thursday that she will be following up in the meantime.

We've also had a couple of questions on the phones with regard to the Health and Safety document we sent out. It is available in our downloads section, but here is a link to it as well just in case. We hope it does actually help.

I knew that it would be Gabem's 10th year this year, but as it turns out that was back in February, so a bit late for any sort of celebration. I've been here almost 7 years now, and things have changed a lot.

I started when we were running the composite company service, which some of you may remember. After that there was the switch in July 2003 to single person companies when the then chancellor gave small businesses a £10,000 tax free allowance on their corporation tax (which was a very good year for everyone), and now we have the Umbrella Companies.

This business is all about adapting, and for all my earlier talk of not much happening week to week with Umbrella Companies I'm very aware that last year we had three different business models one after the other. I suppose what I am trying to say is here's to 10 more years of change and mutually beneficial arrangements.

You'll have Lynne's Irish brogue to keep you company Tuesday, please take good care of her, and I should have something more for you this time next week.

Have a great weekend, and as usual, any comments or suggestions can be sent by clicking on Hugo below.

Hugo
04/07/2008