Nick M.K.

I have stocked up in anticipation and will advertise 17 cars instead of 13. In addition I advertise SOLD cars in the empty advert slots. Some of the SOLD I will utilise to full effect to also "manipulate" AT's price indicators.

First of all contact your own insurance company / broker and ask them the question "Was I insured driving a car that I did not own???" You may be pleasantly surprised if they say yes. Second, ask the garage that supplied the vehicle IF it was taxed and then the million dollar question: IF it was indeed taxed why wasn't it on the MID database where it would've shown as insured on their trade / courtesy / demonstration cover. They have responsibility to add it on the MID irrespective if YOU are insured or not.

You are joking right... The motor trade is what the property developers get into when they get bored of property and too much income... Will never turn my life's work into a block of flats

Absolutely! Something an old £2000 part ex will earn me more than the £15K retail car it came against. In this trade some dealers have a feel about a rare and unusual car and others wouldn't touch anything unfamiliar. I'd go with rare or unusual every time.

Yes that is correct. 5 million limit for PL, my insurance is with Arista / Ageas. Annual premium £1521.

My management style is massively different. If someone employed me they will probably kick me out in month. I am pretty sure after (almost) 14 years on my own I am completely unemployable.

Of course I do. And Ebay and Motors. All part of my huge variable costs. If I have less cars I will pay less and if I stop working for a month or a year I will pay nothing. Also something no one mentioned: Not every car we sell needs to be advertised. 14 cars at £1400 a month works out at roughly £100 per unit advertised but if I source for existing customer the advertising cost for that one unit is zero. I guess some can view advertising as fixed cost, some can view it as variable. Surely. In fact Simon himself stopped his AT for a couple of weeks when he went on holiday. I doubt anyone could stop paying his unit rent or his mobile phone bill in the same way.

And the term ANNUAL COSTS was also important for the purposes of this discussion as it was all about annual fixed costs.

I do. And NONE of these bar the public liability (part of my trade insurance) are fixed ongoing annual costs. My office for example costs me a certain amount. One outright payment in 2015. It is now almost 2019 so I consider it bought, paid for and forgotten. Same for my 2015 Mac and my 2011 Mac computers. Not to mention my phone. Not fixed costs. Just depreciated but usable assets. My work and my personal everyday life are so linked together that it is almost impossible to draw any kind of line between personal and business use for some items (phone, wi-fi, clothes, personal car diesel, printer ink?) so we prefer not to claim some expenses. It may not be 100% tax efficient but is prudent for other reasons. Does your accountant tell you for example that you can claim for the difference between trade and personal car insurance cost IF your trade insurance covers your personal car. I have chosen not to claim that. For some people this will be a four figure sum.

Chaps, brush up on what “fixed annual costs” mean, then ask me (if you don’t already know) IF I have them. I will admit to having TWO sets of trade plates, Lawgistics sub and insurance. A total of £2200. Sorry for being so low cost.

I would really win when I don't have any annual costs. But where would the fun in that be? I'll call Lawgistics tomorrow to renew and then will have some fixed costs.

My OCD suddenly took an interest in this white board. If it's not too commercially sensitive would you email me a photo of it in a personal message. I won't rip off the whole idea I promise :-)

"those"? Did you mean the preparation? How can they be fixed costs??? How can my advertising bill be an "annual fixed cost" if it's £1000 one month, £1300 the next and £0 the third? You stopped yours when you went on holiday so we'll easily agree on that. The insurance is a fixed cost BUT that's not purely business cost: most households need to have car insurance. My phone is £15 per month but again, not purely a business cost. Unit? I don't have one. Rent? Nope. A valeter? Er, No. If I decide to take a month off of work and I have no cars on my stocking plan there will be NO fixed costs. Actually I do have a £30 per annum subscription for Octane magazine but I paid it from my personal account. £595 p/a to Lawgistics IS actually a fixed business cost but at the moment I still haven't decided if I will renew it for 2019 (1 Dec renewal).

No rent. No rates. No phone contracts. Yes insurance but it costs almost what a normal household multi-car policy would cost. And we would have that without the business. Yes Accountancy but it is not a fixed fee for us, depends on turnover. No turnover, no fee. Yes Stocking charges but if we don’t use the facility there is no fixed cost. Yes advertising but again, this is not fixed annual cost like the rent would be. The same goes for the bank charges. My bigest cost: car preparation. Everything else pales in comparison. But this certainly isn’t fixed...

My business does not have annual fixed costs.

I measure on a deal by deal basis. The joys of virtually no overheads.

If you pay people weekly I guess you could measure profit / loss weekly...

Only 12 years to recover? There is an optimist right there

^^ I read ...sold out for a second and thought that I've missed a trick

I saw that Tom Hartley had a fixed £5000 off per car for Black Friday.

@First Response, why not get in touch with our dealer award-nominee (possible winner this year) EPV and set him up? He will get you all drinks at the CD gala night.

Everyone that has such a site. I know a dealer that already has permission for 24 flats on quite a small pitch but is holding out for 30.

James, the Puzzi Pro is £259 refurbished from Karcher Outlet. You also need to buy Karcher detergent tablets that dissolve in the water for much more effective clean https://www.karcheroutlet.co.uk/products/product.asp?id=5977 You will also need to buy an upholstery tool Karcher 10/1 if this kit doesn't include one. https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/291286057057?chn=ps

I'll share my personal experience here from 2014. Close sent a rep who did the application with me a couple of days after my initial call to them. MotoNovo NEVER called me back Same for Blackhorse BLUE were just starting up and weren't well known Northridge said they couldn't work with me until I had an FCA FRN number, after I contacted them a year later with FCA number they said they couldn't work with me because of the small size of my business. Santander, Barclays and Hitachi Capital all wanted bigger businesses, fair enough.

Very busy start of my month 6 in the first 6 days! And then 8 to prep all at the same time (I work alone) so it feels like a very busy month although I have not seen a customer since last week! Currently on 8 with a viewing tomorrow morning by a very-sub-prime finance customer who claims to have sorted his own finance and even left me a £100 deposit for the £18650 car! That deal is a bit of a long shot but if he buys (if his brokers say yes actually) it will be a great month. I also had a (phone) comeback today. A Honda Insight buyer from Birmingham with a battery problem. Wanted to go to Halfords. I sent him to his local ECP instead where a battery was waiting for him (£47 all in). He was most impressed when he needed his radio code and I texted him the correct one from memory! Didn't say anything stupid like "Nick, you must've had a problem with that battery since you've had to enter that code often enough to know it by heart" "It's just like an Audi isn't it, only it's a third of the price". I never liked Skodas. Must be an ex-communism thing for me. A reminder from a past life.