Not everything fits into one or the other – and some items fit into both..
Group Cover
Occasionally, you may need to take time away from your group and arrange for cover – or you may offer to cover another colleagues’ group for them while they’re away. Additionally, you may cover a relief group for a few weeks – whichever option applies, you’ll be receiving or spending money and this should be logged appropriately on your
accounts. Before covering a group, agree with the person who runs the group how you’re going to account for the cover.
Gift Vouchers
Gift Vouchers can appear as a complex process to manage for the purposes of your tax return. This is because in the frame of the business, under the cash basis system of accounting (as consultants use), it appears twice in both income and expenses.
Julia takes a payment of £49.95 from a member for a 12 week gift voucher. This would be classed as income.
The next day, she orders a gift voucher which is priced at £49.95. This is classed as an expense.
The 49.95 money is now in ‘credit’ at Slimming World.
The next week, the gift voucher is provided to the member and they use it in group. Slimming World then pay the % earnings amount to the consultant depending on their retained earnings, and is credited as a sundry. This is classed as income.
As such, from the example above, there are three transactions to log for the account:
- £49.95 income (payment from member)
- £49.95 expense (payment to Slimming World for the Gift Voucher)
- £XX.XX income (credited as a sundry from Slimming World depending on your retained earnings percentage).
Why is it done this way?
Your Slimming World Franchise is a business – and therefore when looking at your accounts, you would see two incomes and one expense for this item. Although the money does not stay with you (which is provided by the member when they purchase the Gift Voucher), the money goes through the business and must be logged.
This is effectively turnover (income) within the company.
If you incur any charges with the initial payment (such as a charge for a cheque to be processed, or for use of a EFT Card Machine), you should log these separately as expenses as usual.
Sundries
Sundries (where you receive income from Slimming World) is another form of income. However sundries may also be an expense as well if you are paying money to Slimming World directly.
Example 1:
Jordan uses a gift voucher in your group, and £25 is credited to you as part of the ‘sundries’ section of your account.
The £25 is classed as income.
Example 2:
As part of the XpressWeigh equipment hire, a charge of £1 is made for insurance, maintenance and support for the equipment each week.
The £1 is classed as an expense.
When it can get complex..
When you look at your monthly Plan for Success overview, you may notice that the figures are not separated, instead the overall weekly amount of sundries are shown. It may be advisable to check each individual weekly summary if this is the case, as it shouldn’t be assumed that the only debit from the sundry amount is for the XPW Charge.