Supporting Bodies, chart - Emma

  

Agenda for meeting 6. 27th April ,Emma

Agenda - 20th April Emma .....

Minutes -27th April. Emma....

Minutes 20th April....Emma

Minutes -23rd march...

                                                                      

Bookkeeping Template - Nikita

Book keeping template research - Nikita

For part of the accounting section of the brief, we must produce a book keeping template for our company, with our chosen logo on.
Here are some websites I have visited when researching book keeping,

http://www.the-aop.com/

http://www.bytestart.co.uk/

http://www.businessaccountingbasics.co.uk/

http://www.bookkeeping-basics.net/

http://www.sbsbusinessservices.com/

Final Forms - Nikita

Model Release Form - Nikita

Below is a final copy of our model release form, with our logo attached at the top.

Model Release Form Research - Nikita

For the advertising and design section of the brief, we have to produce a model release form with our chosen logo on it, and it needs to be tailored to suit our company.
Here are some websites I have visited when researching these forms:

http://www.professionalphotographer.co.uk/

http://www.alamy.com/

http://shootnations.org/downloads/model_release_form.pdf

http://www.bjp-online.com/

http://www.imagestate.com/

http://www.the-aop.org/

Office Space (Rik)

For our business we will need an office to work in and edit are photographs. I had a look on a few websites specializing in selling office space and came across officialspace.co.uk. This site had an inbuilt search engine which let you put in details about where your office would be located and how many workspaces you will need. I typed in our details with a bogus name and waited for a reply.

After a day I had received a few emails from a few different companies that had been advertised on the site. This is what they said;

Bourne Business

21st May 2010



Dear Mr Taylor,

Serviced Offices, Bourne Business Centre, Carlisle.

Further to a recent on-line enquiry received from Office Broker I understand you may be looking for office accommodation in the Carlisle area. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce Bourne Business Centre to you in the hope that the facilities we have to offer here may be interest.

Bourne Business Centre is a three storey office complex located in Milbourne Street a short distance from Carlisle City Centre. We offer high quality, fully serviced and equipped office accommodation with private parking on flexible terms enabling companies to trade without large or long term financial commitments.

Rental prices start from £170.00 + VAT per workstation per month. Offices here at Bourne Business Centre are fully serviced and prices include.

• Rent

• Rates

• Office Furniture

• Heat & Light

• Cleaning

• Reception Facilities and Personalised Call Handling

• Voicemail

• Visitors Coffee Lounge

• Use of Kitchens & Refreshments

• Security and Fire Alarm Systems.





We also have several additional rooms available for tenants use. Firstly we have two meeting rooms that can seat up to 6. These rooms are furnished with a meeting table and chairs and also benefit from high speed broadband access. Use of these rooms for up to 1 hour a day is available at no additional charge.

We also have a consultation room available furnished with up to 6 comfortable chairs for more informal meetings or discussions.

In addition to this we do also have a large conference room available for hire at discounted rates for tenants. This room can seat up to 20 and benefits from the latest in presentation equipment and high speed broadband and internet access.



Many additional facilities are available here at Bourne Business Centre including:

• High Speed Broadband Access

• Telecommunications Equipment

• Provision of Telephone Lines

• Private Parking

• Conference Facilities

• Word processing, Photocopying, Faxing & Admin Support

• Franking and Posting of Outgoing Mail

• PA Services

• Bookkeeping

• Colour Printing





Bourne Business Centre is the ideal choice for the professional serviced office with everything required for the successful running of your company from that personal touch provided by our receptionists to state of the art telecommunications technology.

Further information and images can also be found on our web site at www.bournebusinesscentre.co.uk

If you require any additional information or would like to arrange a viewing of the premises and the facilities available please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards



Jo Kyle

Lettings Manager



Pacific House Business



Good Afternoon



Thank you for your enquiry for a Serviced Office that has been passed on to us by Office Broker.



We would like to introduce you to Pacific House Business Centre.



Pacific House is a purpose built Serviced Office Centre and is situated just ½ mile from Junction 44 of the M6 therefore offering easy access from the Motorway (North and South) and from the A69 (East) and with the Northern By-pass now under construction and due to be completed in 2011/2012 we shall be easily accessible from the West.



The building is new and finished to a very high standard and the offices are let on a flexible license. The fee includes:- Rent, Rates, Power, Heating, Building Insurance, Cleaning, Office Furniture, Car Parking, Staffed Reception, Breakout Area, Tea and Coffee. You also have 24 hour access, 7 days a week to your office.



The Business Centre has two meeting rooms available for you to hire should you wish to entertain your clients. The Boardroom can accommodate up to 20 persons in a boardroom style, 20/25 in a theatre style, 16 in a cabaret style and 12 persons in a classroom style. The Boardroom is equipped with Free WIFI, ceiling mounted OHP with an inbuilt audio system, flip chart whiteboard and air conditioning. The smaller meeting room can accommodate up to 10 persons in a boardroom style. You will receive a complimentary tea or coffee on arrival and further refreshments and quality catering can be provided, upon request, at an extra charge. We also offer admin support (such as typing, copying, laminating, binding and mailing) for your meeting, at a small charge. These rooms can be hired on a full or half day basis and the smaller meeting room can be hired by the hour.



We would like to offer you a three person office at the rate of £ 425.00 (excluding V.A.T.)



Pacific House Business Centre office hours are 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. Monday to Friday and we welcome you to come and take a look around the offices to see what we have to offer.

If these times are not convenient a more suitable time can be arranged by appointment.



I have attached some information for your perusal.



Please do not hesitate to contact us ion 01228 406363 if you require any further information and we look forward to hearing from you soon.



Kind Regards

Elaine Dodd

Office Manager



From looking at both emails and the cost from both of them the price would be around £400-£600 inc VAT. This is much cheaper than I thought and there is all sorts of facilities for us to use as well such as meeting rooms for clients and a kitchenette.

Professional organisations and supporting bodies.....

Whilst compiling our Company's list of Professional organisations ,I decided to do some research first ,below are some screen grabs from various different websites .....

The AOP offer an excellent service and their website ,is easy to navigate through.

They produce the book 'beyound the lens ' .This helps budding Photographers into the unknown world of starting up a business and includes various templates ,ie licence to use form and model release forms.

The book can be purchased direct from the AOP on their website.

I managed to borrow this book from the library and I have found it an invaluable source of information.

There are many different forms of membership ,including student . AOP offer workshops, AOP awards ,portfolio and Business services.

The Society of Wedding photographers ,offer extra benefits too ,for Wedding photographers.

Above is an example of the list of benefits they include in their membership.

They do include , Qualifications, Advertising and a mentoring program.

The above screen grab ,shows the list of benefits the Swpp include. They also have a special offer for joining.

The RPS ,is one of the most popular to join and includes student membership ,as well as offering excellent packages for businesses.

Membership ,includes : Education , On-line portfolio and other offers.

I feel that the above three professional organisations would really help our Wedding company go forward and offer the support we need.

Lightroom 2.0 (Rik)

Lightroom would be a fantastic piece of software because it can batch edit hundreds of photographs at the same time. This will be extremely handy for our business because of the amount of photographs that we will be taking during a wedding. Lightroom can apply the same changes to a lot of photographs at the same time, so if there was one annoying technical difficulty during a shoot such as a piece of dust on the lens, we could edit it out of all the photographs with one easy click. We can also separate photographs from different shoots by using the many systems it has in it such as the rating or flagging system.

Because of how useful Lightroom is we will be using it as our primary software but in sync with Photoshop in case we need to make some major adjustments to the photographs.

Photoshop CS5 (Rik)

For our secondary piece of editing software we will be using Adobe Photoshop CS5. This will be the software we will use for extensive editing such as getting rid of any marks on the pictures due to technical problems or problems we found on the day. Photoshop also holds many filters and vignettes which the client could find interesting and may want them added to the picture.

Photoshop is quite pricey but worth the cost due to the amount of editing it can help with. We would use Photoshop in sync with Lightroom for the photographs that need majorly editing because it is known as a "destructive" piece of software due to the massive changes it makes to the pixels of the image.

Insurance Quotes (Rik)

After looking into how much our equipment will all cost I looked into how much I could insure the equipment for. For this I looked at a compare site specialized in checking the market for photographic equipment insurance.

This site was called http://www.camerainsurance.co.uk/

This site generated many insurance sites to pick from but the top two were Photo Guard and E&L. First I checked out http://www.photoguard.co.uk/

This site was quick and easy to use and generated a quote as soon as I entered the details. Because we will be travelling round with our equipment I got the full cover quote which covered outside damage and theft as well inside.

With Photo Guard there is many benefits that come with the professional insurance quote such as covering portfolio damage. This could be handy if a problem with our portfolio ever occurred. The price of the insurance came up to around £827.00 for year or £77.88 monthly.

The next insurance provider I looked at was E&L insurance. http://www.eandl.co.uk/

E&L's website was also very easy to use and also provided an instant quote. I put the same details in as the last one and got my quote.

When I got my quote I wasn't quite sure if I had typed the details in correctly because it was so low so I double checked it again and found that I hadn't clicked the outside insurance as well as indoors so I re-did the details.

The quote I got back had almost doubled but was still cheaper than Photo Guard. At E&L it was £438.01 a year.

This was much cheaper than Photo Guard but covered less in its policy such as the portfolio insurance. If a problem with our portfolio ever happened we would not be covered although it may be cheaper to replace it with our own money.

After looking at both policies and what they both cover I decided we should go with Photo Guard because they covered a few more things than E&L which were worth the extra price.

Amended Wishlist (Rik)

Heres the amended wishlist for our business. I have taken off the studio equipment and costs becuase we have decided to stay just in the wedding genre of photography.

Item Brand and Model Cost




Camera Equipment Camera x2 Nikon D700 £3,529.98

Prime Lens x3 Sigma 50mm HSM £1,100.97

Telephoto Lens x3 Nikon 18-200mm VRII £1,617.00

Battery Grip x2 Nikon MB-D10 £518.98

Tripod x2 Swarovski CT101 £878.98

Polarizer Filter x2 Hoya 55mm SHMC £129.98

Reflectors Interfit INT227 £39.14

Flash Gun x2 Nikon SB-900 £651.98

Light Meter x2 Sekonic L-308S £257.98

Camera Bag x2 Crumpler Muffin Top £298.00



Office Apple Mac x2 Apple iMac 27 inch £3,188.00

Colour Management Colorvision Spyder pro 3 £89.99

Lightroom Adobe Lightroom 2 £214.99

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop CS4 £614.00

Printer x2 Epson 3880 £1,958.00

Camera Cleaning Kit Green Clean LC7000 £8.99

Stationary Various £50.00

Phone/Internet Sky £168.00 per 6 months

Desk x2 Cantilever Rectangular £502.00

Chair x2 Decodo Designer Chairs £190.00

Kitchenette B&Q £450.00

Photographic Paper PPD Super Premium £60.00 200 sheets

Printer Ink Epson K3 £200.00

Clients Frames Kenro Ambassador £49.99 12 sets of 3

Brochures Inkylittlefingers £472.59 for 500

Business Cards Vistaprint £3.74 for 250

Frames (Own Work) Kenro Ambassador £82.99 6 sets of 3

Frames (Certificates) Kenro Ambassador £49.99 12 sets of 3



Professional Bodies AOP Per 6 Months £157.50

SWPP Per 6 Months £50.00

RPS Per 6 Months £50.00

Grand Total: £17,633.76

Advertising Yellow Pages (Rik)

For our business to get noticed we need to advertise and get our name out into the public. For doing this I have looked into three different ways we can advertise and how much the cost will be.


The first place I looked was the yellow pages. The yellow pages is a massive directory book containing various details about different businesses. This would be ideal to advertise in because everybody receives on through their door, so I looked for more info on http://www.yell.com./

When clicking on "Get Your Yell Advert Now" I looked into the prices and found out you can only advertise in one town at a time. So if we wanted to advertise in the whole of Cumbria it would cost a lot of money!

Just for one town with a full colour half column it would cost £1465.00. This would mean if we wanted to advertise here we would have to narrow down the places where we would get most business.

Advertising Business Cards (Rik)

Business cards are an ace way to get our company noticed. We not only can carry them around with us and hand them out to would be clients but we can also pay shops to put them out on display.

For our business cards I looked on a few websites that print them and found http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/

On Vistaprint they had many designs you could pick from or you can upload your own images up. Even though our business would have its own design, I used a Vistaprint design for an example. For 500 cards the price was a very affordable £17.74

Advertising Brochure (Rik)

For our business we would like to have a full brochure of all our most successful weddings and some examples of the services we offer.

For this I looked at a few printing websites and came across http://www.inkylittlefingers.co.uk/

The website had quite a handy little calculator which you could put your requirements into and it would calculate the price there and then. Because the first figure was quite cheap I decided to up the quantity we needed in case a client would like to hold onto one. The cost for 200, 20 page brochures with silk pages and a laminate cover came to £409.65.

six month forecast chart ....

Above is the forecast plan for our group . I am not sure the figures are correct ,as we seem to have made quite a bit of money ! However all the figures do add up !

this was a real challenge for me ,as I have never done anything like this before .I also don't know how to use Microsoft excel ,so in the end I used Microsoft Word .(I spend all day just trying to work out how to do a chart in Word !) A real challenge !

I think I have been unrealistic on the amount of rent it would cost and how many weddings we would do ,so realistically I dont think we would make so much profit .

6 month forecast (rough template)...

Above is a rough template of our six month forecast . I downloaded this from Microsoft on the Internet ,however I am not sure I will use this ,as I find it quite complicated and as I am not used to Microsoft excel .I am now looking at a simpler version.

Business start-up research...

I decided to look further into Starting up a Business and found some interesting websites ,that would help our Wedding Business .

HSBC had loads of excellent information on their website .Their start-up section includes sections on different loans ,cash flow help and protecting your Business.

HSBC also have accounts for a small business,this would be worth while researching further ,as there are special banking rates and extra facilities.I felt this would help our Wedding business and help achieve our initial banking needs.

I then went on to research Business loans.HSBC have fixed monthly payments for a small business loan. This would really help in the first couple of years ,as knowing the exact amount every month would make the initial cash flow easier to work out.

Next, I looked further into managing our cash flow for the first six months. We would be able to borrow up to £25.000 with a small business loan ,have access to the company's money and be able to sign up to a business credit card. I am not sure if a credit card would be beneficial at the beginning ?

Finally I looked into keeping our business safe . The company needs to protect against legal matters ,protect our equipment and protect against damage to our vehicle.

Whilst researching further ,I came across http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/  This is a really valuable website ,that is an excellent resource for a small business. The King fisher centre in Rawtenstall ,help many small businesses start up and can offer grants ,depending on which area your post code falls in. This is also true for the 'Globe Centre' Accrington ,again depending on where you live ,grants may be available.

further information on grants and fiance help.

Above is another example of a website I found wwwbytestart.co.uk . The above information can be found on this link above.

I found this extra research both interesting and invaluable to myself and the role I have within our team.