The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: September 2009
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Well if last year I gave you too many reminders about the closing date for the self assessments, this year I am probably guilty of giving you too few. Next year maybe I'll get it right.

The deadline for paper self assessment submissions is the end of October, so you better get a move on if that's what you are planning. There is always the alternative of the electronic submission which has a closing date of the end of January, you need to register well in advance of the January deadline if this is your plan, so don't leave it to the last minute.

We are once again running our self assessment completion service for our umbrella employees. This is specifically for the completion of the paper submissions, and costs £97.75 (inc VAT). Given how close the deadline is, you need to get in touch within the next 7-14 days if you want us to complete it for you.

The list of documents required to complete the self assessment is pretty extensive, so we have put together a checklist geared towards our submission service but available to all current Gabem members. If you'd like one just get in touch through the usual channels and we'll have one sent out to you.

We're unable to run an electronic submission service for self assessments due to the way the government portal is set up, but later in the year we aim to have another service available to help you input the figures online yourself.

Hugo
24/09/2009

Currently new fathers get only 2 weeks of paternity leave at statutory minimum pay, obviously this is better than nothing, but this level of pay isn't exactly a great incentive at a time when a family probably needs as much money as possible. It's clear that something needs to change to give fathers a realistic opportunity to spend time with their new or expanded family.

With this in mind news of a proposed government shake up of Paternity and Maternity pay could be expected to be met with some excitement. Unfortunately that's not the case as it falls well short of fixing the financial problem mentioned above. The proposed system would allow a mother to transfer part or all of the last 6 months of maternity leave to the father so that she could go back into work, and the father could stay at home with the family receiving statutory minimum payment for the first 3 months

Ignoring for a moment the administrative cost to businesses and the government, how is this of real benefit to families? It offers them absolutely no additional financial support, and merely shifts the financial burden from one parent to the other. If you bring in the unfortunate wage gap that often exists between the genders, the financial burden is shifting to the parent who is statistically more likely to be earning less!

Rather than go to the cost and effort of re-arranging deck chairs as they are, a simpler and far more effective idea would just be to put the money they would have spent having to consult, launch and administer this new scheme, and instead give fathers more of a financial helping hand to spend time with their families.

A quick poll of the men in the office who have recently become fathers or are about to become fathers produced a variety of suggestions. Ideas ranging from ones similar to that mentioned above to others promoting a set number of days per month at above statutory minimum payments for a set number of months, ensuring more consistant contact with the family. As many different ideas as there were, one thing was clear and that was that the proposed plan is of little use to anyone here.

Out of curiosity we'd be interested to hear any thoughts you have on the matter of paternity pay and the proposed changes. If you want to get in touch, just get in contact below.

Hugo
18/09/2009

As you are all hopefully aware by now we recently changed our phone numbers and Hugo has kindly given me the opportunity to explain why.

OFCOM who regulate the various communications industries have long been looking at fixing the '0870 problem'. But first a bit of history to show how the problem originated.

08xx numbers were created to allow companies to present customers with a nationally available number at a fixed cost, be it free for 0800, local rate for 0845 and national for 0870. Companies liked this because it allowed them a number which would not need changing if they moved premises and also gave fixed costs for budgeting. However, in the case of 0870 numbers they also allowed the charge to the caller to be flexible, thus the 0870 problem began.

Customers found they were being charged significantly over the intended national rate when calling 0870 numbers (and in turn some companies were significantly supplementing their income by receiving a share of the call cost even while they held you in a queue!). This resulted in the birth of websites such as saynoto0870.com (as usual, consumers raising an issue before the regulators) and finally the OFCOM review.

So what have OFCOM done? If you want to read the detail follow this link but the gist of it is that 0870 numbers will now come back down to a fixed national rate. This is great news for consumers but meant quite significant changes for businesses operating these numbers - they would now be charged to receive calls to 0870 numbers.

Now of course this is where we come to the decisions by companies like us to move away from 0870 numbers. Some have moved to 0844 numbers (which still provide them with revenue) but Gabem decided to take the opportunity to instead benefit our members by switching to a geographic number. This means that most of you will hopefully now be calling us for free on inclusive minutes.

I feel it's important at this point for us to raise our hands and say that we did receive some revenue from our old 0870 number, but that was not the main reason that it was used. The main reason was for security and disaster recovery (which us guys in IT take very seriously), but new technology has now allowed us to get both of those from a geographic number.

It's a pity not all companies have taken the opportunity to better serve their customers and we will always continue to look for ways to improve our offering. If you have any ideas then please contact us, we also now have a twitter account @GabemUmbrella which you can contact us through in addition to phone/SMS and email.

The IT Guy
16/09/2009

I laughed when I heard the BBC news article about the cash machine in Spitalfields asking if customers "want some moolah for your sky rocket ?". Customers gave the innovation a mixed reception, but it got me thinking about the money slang that has worked it's way into our language. Here a few commons ones to entertain you.

Squid - a pound (£1). The old joke is about a shark who meets his friend the whale and says, "I'm glad I bumped into you - here's that sick squid I owe you."

Pony - twenty five pounds (£25.00) or cockney rhyming slang as macaroni There were loads of suggestions for this one, could it have been the price of a pony or alternatively the pony may have been a reference to a Indian twenty -five rupee banknote that featured a pony.

Monkey- five hundred pounds (£500.00) Reference to 500 rupee bank note that has a monkey on it .

Wedge - nowadays 'a wedge' a pay-packet amount of money, apparently years ago, coins were actually cut into wedge-shaped pieces to create smaller money units.

Now you know the lingo you could have a monkey for Xmas, if you put a pony away each week from your wedge, and Bob's your uncle.

Karen
04/09/2009