Can I claim these in first month accounts?

[stargazer1]

I have just been registered and am starting with new mindees on Monday. Am going food shopping today, will do both mindees food shop and our personal food shop at the same time but on separate receipts. Can I claim the business miles? Do u keep receipts for fuel or do you note down the miles and claim it that way?

Also, I have been keeping receipts for the past three months for things I have been buying in prep, i.e double buggy, noticeboard, outdoor toys etc. Can I now put these in on my first lots of expenses in my book (its going to put me at a massive loss!) but obviously they are business expenses.

God Ive never done any bookkeeping before. Help!!!! :eek:

[madmamma]

You don't need to do separate shopping for mindees
It's much easier to work out the cost of each single meal over a period of say, a month, and then use these figures for accounting purposes:

cost of ingredients divided by number of servings = average cost of meal
£15.00 / 5 people = £3.00 each for evening meal
When you notice prices are increasing, do the process again (I generally check every 6 months)

Highlight on your bill anything that is solely used for mindees, like nappies/wipes etc and claim for that in another accounting column
Keep any receipts that have been highlighted. Just food receipts need to be kept for 3 months in case of a food issue, but can then be binned.



Mileage: keep a notebook in your car, and make a note of the starting mileage and the end mileage of any minding related trips you make. You then have a record of where your miles to claim @ 45p per mile
Yes you can claim mileage to go shopping for mindees


Pre reg receipts - yes you can put it down, and yes it will create a loss, but that's fine.


HTH

[stargazer1]

Thank you!! Thats a really good idea re. the food as I thought it would be really hard to keep a track of everything. For example, if I buy a bunch of bananas and my children eat 2, how do I work out how much of that bunch was mindees and so on! ha. Going to take me a while to get my head around all this!! x

[madmamma]

You're welcome :thumbsup:
If you do this religiously for the first month over EVERYTHING food related you might be surprised at the average costs (generally more than you thought)

If the bunch costs £2.00 and there are 6 bananas = 33p each
The next week a bunch is £2.50 and there are 5 = 50p each
The following week a bunch is £2.50 and there are 6 = 41.6p each

so the average cost is 33 + 50 + 42 (round up over .5) = 1.25 divided by 3 (weeks) = 42p per banana

I would keep your workings out for the tax man should he question HOW you worked it out each time you do it (every 6 months or so) at the back of your accounts folder/file

[Chatterbox Childcare]

I find this way too time consuming as prices fluctuate so much and so quickly

I take my shopping bill and take off personal items and only for mindees items and then divide the total bill left by the number of mindees that week and family, giving me a per head cost. I then multiply this figure by the mindees giving me a weekly figure.

If you have the same children each week you could do this on a weekly or monthly or yearly basis is it is always the same

Try both ways and see which is quicker.

[stargazer1]

Thank you. What I have done is sat down, prepared a sample menu (obviously it will vary slightly but the gist is the same) of what I will feed the mindees over a week. I will not be proving an evening meal as I finish at 6 and most parents wanted to feed their children at home, which is fine by me. But I will be providing breakfast, morning snack/fruit, cooked lunch and pudding, and afternoon snack/fruit. When I combined this with extras such as juice etc, I came up with an average cost of approximately:

Full day child: £3.00 per day

Before/after schoolie: £1.00 per day

Does this sound about right?

Also, what happens if you take them out for lunch? For example if we have lunch at soft play or something? Does this have to be included in this amount or can we claim this separately? I intend to go to soft play once a week but the cost of food and a drink there is obviously considerably more than it would cost me at home.

[Kiddleywinks]

Everyone's costings are different to be honest, shopping costs at Asda would (proabably) be cheaper than it would be shopping at Waitrose
Same food, different costs

Claim separate for eating out as it's additional, but don't forget to get a receipt if it's over £10.00

:thumbsup:

[Chatterbox Childcare]

Claim the full amount when you are out for you and the mindees

£1 seems very low for an after school child. Mine will have an apple and yoghurt and that is £1 and that is for starters. Ice creams costs are a lot more not to mention the milk and juice I go through