Can you believe that’s January flashed by already?
I hope you are staying accountable to your new year goals and scheduling time in your diary for your highest priorities.
Back in my WEEK #3 post on goal setting I outlined the process I use for artful implementation- which in brief was about selecting your key (highest leverage) project/s for the quarter and building out a 12 week implementation plan.
Aspects of my Q1 projects are related to optimising existing systems and laying foundations for the next stage of growth in our SA business. A few weeks into the plan and I’m feeling like decent progress has been made. In taking these steps I thought I’d share a few notes from things that I’ve either learned or been reminded of this last week.
# On Legislation
As we gear up to extend our SA experience to other landlords with a managed SA offering, I’ve been looking into the various legislation that people managing property are required to uphold. For example the Letting Agent Code of Practice provides the benchmark for expected standards of practice and covers such things as handling landlord’s money and professional indemnity arrangements, amongst other points.
More can be found with these links that cover Scotland and England respectively (some riveting Sunday reading): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/sdsi/2016/9780111030912
#On VAT
We have a few business entity structures and with one, we are at the point of submitting our first VAT return for one of our businesses that is flat rate registered. As we were looking at the VAT amounts from invoices collected they were looking a bit higher than expected. In exploring if we could offset any input VAT from our purchases I found that if you are flat rate registered you can claim for single capital purchases over £2000. That means you can’t claim on 3 separate visits to Ikea adding up to £2k but you could claim on the order of £2K+ from Fusion for example (that’s the way I interpreted it). You can’t however claim on services unfortunately.
See more here:
Another point to note about VAT is that if you are running an SA business and have guest stays of more than 28 days, then VAT is applicable on the full price of the booking for the first 28 days, but only applicable on the serviced element thereafter, ie the linen and cleaning services.
In addition to the ‘ON’ the business projects, the ‘IN’ the business work has been very busy. Now that we’ve past the worst of the tourism ‘tumbleweed’ month for many SA operators I’m pleased to say that our contractor bookings have been pretty satisfying, both from direct relationships and from contractor finding us on booking.com etc.
We have been selecting a few different furniture and design options working with our friends at Fusion as over the next couple of weeks we will be onboarding 3 new units.
On our development and refurb side of the business, Chris has identified a number of interesting sites he’s appraising and also a potential refurb to SA that we just submitted an offer for. Fingers crossed on that one.
To wrap the week up I spent the day with Paul Smith and a room of like minded people at the shiny new Touchstone Training venue for the Property Leverage Day. Although I’ve probably clocked up many hours listening to Paul, I subscribe to the fact that we humans typically need reminded more than we need new instructions.
Needless to say I’ve come away with pages of great notes and multiple action points. Thank you, as ever, for your wisdom Paul.
Have a great week all