What kind of limits do you put on vacations during summer months?

Summer seems to be the busier time of year for our carpet, upholstery and T&G cleaning, and yet that's when everyone wants their vacations.

Thanks,
John L.

Part timers are the answer IMHO. I've always favored using multiple well paid "part time" techs. This enables us to cover the schedule regardless of what comes up.




Rick Gelinas
encapman

Rick,
In a topic discussed a few weeks ago you mentioned that you pay your techs 1.5 to 2 cents per square foot. Is this as emplyees or as subcontractors? If they are employees, does that include payroll taxes etc? On that 35000 s/f job you did last week, that would mean at 1.5 cents you would have paid $525.00. Is that split between techs or for each tech?
Just trying to figure out if I can do something similar.

Mark we use a payroll service to pay our techs. They take care of all the taxes and workman's comp etc and they cut the check for each employee. Our cost for using the payroll service runs at about 22%.

Now let's do the math:
If an employee goes out and cleans a 5,000 sq ft job and gets paid 2 cents per sq ft he'll get paid $100 before payroll expenses. The actual cost to us would be approximately $122. So if we charged just 10 cents for the job, we'll will bill our customer $500 and our labor cost will be $122.

In this scenario, our technician will work between 2 to 2.5 hours with the Cimex and get paid $100. Not bad. This kind of money makes it easy to attract and retain really good part time help. And we have grossed $378 to go toward profit and other operating expenses. And as you know, with this system our other operating expenses are pretty mild too. I like this kind of math





Rick Gelinas
encapman

Okay, I got it. What if the job requires more than one tech? Does each get 1.5 or 2 cents? Or, is it split?

If 2 techs go to the job, then 2 machines will be running which means that each of them will have cleaned half of the job, so they would each be paid for what they cleaned; or in other it would be split between them. How's that for a run-on sentence?




Rick Gelinas
encapman

OK, Good Idea, I should just move to Florida and work for you! You pay more than I make!

...but I still have people that get vacations.

Any suggestions on Scheduling?

Thanks everyone,
John L.

Rick,

I've recently acquired a part timer and am needing to start a payroll service, what is recommended?

And also where and how are vac times figured into your techs cleaning (do you do all the vacuuming yourself?)

thx

Dan

Where I am located, payroll services will not deal with me because I am so small (just a part timer and myself). However, if you have or obtain Quickbooks Pro, they provide an online payroll service that I have used for the last two years. After the initial setup, all I have to do is upload the payroll information (hours, amounts, etc.), they do all the calculations. They supply the blank checks which I print out. They file IRS reports and send payroll taxes, etc. They supply W2's at the end of the year. I download the information into my check register. The charge for the service is very fair.

As mark commented, Quickbooks has a very good payroll service. But keep in mind, you'll still need to purchase workman's comp. If there's an accident and a tech gets injured and you don't have workman's comp - you're in trouble!

Here's what we use and what I'd recommend. Go with a "payroll leasing" service. These operate like a temp agency. Your employees are technically employees of the employee leasing company. And the service covers everything for you, including workman's comp. As Mark commented, it can be hard to find a company that will deal with very small companies. Call every service in your area, some are more flexible than others. One alternative would be to run your own presonal paychecks through the service too. This might bring you up to an acceptable usage level for them, and it would also cover you in the event thatr you got injured.

Dan, good question... Who does the pre-vacuuming? We try to bring the customer on board with some good pre-vacuuming. Here's how we do it. When we negotiate the job, we offer this to the prospect... We ask them if they have an in house vacuuming program. (Yes) Good; we can save you some money. The price for your carpet cleaning would be $650, however I can discount the price to $520 if you'll have your people vacuum real well before we come. [They love this and will usually jump on it - BTW the price I wanted for the carpet cleaning was $520 to start with --- the "discount" is simply an inducement to get them committed to vacuuming]. We also send each customer a reminder postcard before we come to clean the carpet. The reminder postcard emphasizes the need to vacuum well before and after the carpet is cleaned for best results. This works pretty well. HOWEVER, I recognize that they won't likely get the vacuuming done as well as we'd like them to, so our guys are prepared to vacuum the traffic lanes wherever that may be needed. And some intensive vacuuming can be accomplished fairly quickly in the traffic lanes using the Hoover Conquest. We've found that this approach to pre-vacuuming works well for us on the majority of the jobs that we bid on.




Rick Gelinas
encapman