Ok, someone had to ask, so it may as well be me. Whats so unique about your system of charging?

Kris

I got as far as the 4 million businesses needing a bookkeeper line and thought, well, I've read that somewhere before!!!!

I'm just too busy though so really just couldn't be arsed to take the piss out of the figure properly... Maybe if they repost in February I'll point out why that figures total tosh... And not just because 3.5 million of those businesses are bookkeepers, lol.

We should start a franchise Kris... Do you reccon there's much call for wit and sarcasm? Its a service with over 60 million potential clients in the UK alone!

I am surprised there isn't a rule in the forum about "advertising for commercial gain", most sites do not allow this as they would be potentially implicated if things go wrong.

If they are allowed to post they should at least be vetted - a newbie should not be allowed to post commercials. Come on forum moderators, lets have some proper moderating. Otherwise the site will degenerate into a free for all and the professionalism lost!

 

V

 

Hi VIP,

there are rules in place and I ban a few dozen people a year for advertising / SEO (For a while it seemed that we had all IP addresses in Alaska banned but we rescinded that when it was found that some of the guys from Intuit use those addresses).

In addition to banning posters there are at least twice as many cases a year of removing advertising from peoples signatures generally accompanied by a public warning not to do it again.

If we banned all posters who are looking for commercial gain there would be nobody left.

The training companies are looking for new trainee's, the professional bodies are looking for new members, software companies are looking to sell their wares. Getting the sales pitch from the horses mouth lets us debate things and on occassion I am sure that feedback from this site has altered the way that certain businesses provide their services.

Basically if they were not allowed to post on here then we would not be able to fix them for the benefit of the industry as a whole.

A franchise is no better or worse than those mentioned above and on occassion franchised businesses have provided interesting debate (and hours of amusement) on here. Just look back at some of the heated debates with Bob Harper of Crunchers.

The franchise posted in this thread has been around for a while and will come up in many searches. By posting here they basically open themselves up for vetting by the site members.

What comeback would they have from that as such is like those internet sites where people put pictures of themselves up to be voted on and then getting upset when people do not appreciate their looks as much as they do.

If your a commercial enterprise and you put your head above the parapet then expect it to be either shot off or accepted.

An excellent example of that on here is 12pay. Tom came on supporting his product without attempting to sell it and that (I believe) turned into sales for his business.

Conversely we have had cloud companies come on here attempting to sell and they've crashed and burned.

All a matter of know your audience (a franchise company telling people often on a shoestring that £17k is affordable in this day and age isn't going to turn into sales where a training company telling people about free funding for training to put them in the same position will sell courses).

Rest assured that the site is constantly watched and regular action is taken to maintain the high standard of content which has become an excellent resource for people in the profession.

Shaun.

p.s. I'm the only moderator so your post was directed at myself which is why you got the above explanation as to my thinking when deciding whether to let posts / posters remain.

"a newbie should not be allowed to post commercials. Come on forum moderators, lets have some proper moderating."


And a newbie shouldn't come on here ordering moderators around when they have no idea of the time and effort given, free of charge may i add, by the moderators.



There, i said it.

Oh, you're the moderator?

If i'd have known that i would have kept my trap shut. lol smileyface

Spamkebab wrote:

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Ahh Franchises, Where is Bob by the way?

---

Thats like saying where are the Christians cos we've got all these lions that are getting bored and hungry.

He seemed to give up on both this site and accountingweb at more or less the same time (late December 2012) as he was getting flack in both camps.

Their franchise relaunched in April and he now seems to now be heading his own accountancy practice in the West Country. Good luck to him. He seemed a nice guy but some of the posts were a bit off the mark.

I think that he did make some good points but they got lost amongst the arguements around the other posts... As Kris says, don't mention the sheep!

I could hear your Basil Fawlty impression there Shaun. Good effort.

Spam: "And a newbie shouldn't come on here ordering moderators around when they have no idea of the time and effort given, free of charge may i add, by the moderators." - hear hear!

How do we know that you are Vip Patel? We don't, we take it one trust that the people who post here are who they say that they are.

If a poster is commiting a fraud then the police would be supplied with the IP Address which could be tracked through the associated service provider.

There is no reason to believe that the poster in this instance is not who they say that they are. They have said nothing disparaging about the franchise they simply attempted to let people know that it existed (maybe the wrong site for that).

Noone here has said that there is anything wrong with that franchise, only picked holes in its advertising (this really isn't the site to try and bullshit people with lines like 4 million businesses need a bookkeeper! and for those looking for a franchise the franchise fee of £17k seems out of line with return expectations when compared dirtectly to something like a taxassist or Certax franchises).

As for touchy, we're just very protective of the site... Which is sort of ironic as thats exactly what you were saying that we were not.

Hi Tim,

nicely put.

off subject here but good point on the time to change the Avatars again now Christmas is over.

Tut yeah. Time to put away the goblin ears, paper hats and false noses lol

This pic was taken at Janet's Foss near Malham. Great little walk there taking in Gordale Scar and the cove all with a mile or so.

Don Tax wrote:

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This pic was taken at Janet's Foss near Malham. Great little walk there taking in Gordale Scar and the cove all with a mile or so.

---

But being a focal beauty spot its no good at all for hiding bodies...

Now two mins from my doorstep I've got 28 square miles of this...

Maybe I should lead with that when I argue with people on the site. lol.

 

 

I know Kris, it's difficult to believe but very occassionally I have been know to allow my normal patience to slip... Bet you just thought of the sheep again... Or the dancing monkey... or the dollar bill... or IAB not having meetings... actually, thinking about it, its quite a long list.... Ok, its a fair cop. I may be ever so slightly imbalanced.

lol Kris. If they don't then they've shot themselves in the foot with this thread.

To businesses like Rosemary's this site is a bit of a pit trap.

They skip merrily in lulled into a false sense of security by the sites title only for the curtain to drop away to reveal the gnashing, chomping site members to be predominantly accountants and provisional wing advanced level bookkeepers (who are to all intent and purpose accountants by any other name).

If they now came back on board and started posting (correct) answers to technical questions and not trying to sell a franchise they would be accepted and in that way they
might sell some franchises (again, thinking of the 12pay model there).

That said they need to lose the line about 4m businesses and drop their prices sub £10k (and sell people on a really good package for that price) OR drop the word bookkeeping and offer an accountancy franchise at the current price. If they don't do that I cannot see them getting any interest from here at all.

They are also going to need to convince people what their franchise can give its members that is above and beyond what sound networking, a good supportive professional body and being on this site does not.

And I like the bit at the bottom of the fees page...

"* All fees are subject to VAT which is reclaimable"

You would have to really hit the ground running to turnover more than £79,000 over 12 months doing bookkeeping from home!

Shamus wrote:

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But being a focal beauty spot its no good at all for hiding bodies.............

Watch out anyone called Trevor or Jordache or Morgan lol

"But being a focal beauty spot its no good at all for hiding bodies... "

You just have to put a little more thought into it, that's all.

I mean, um, can we pretend I didn't just say that?

Whether or not you see this franchise as a good business model, or the chance to mock a business model, the reality is that this  is a free advertisment. Whether forum users liked it or not, if I were to post details of our own courses on here they would be removed without question.

 

i know of a few people who have had the finance to go down the franchise route and it has worked out very well for them. Yes, there is somene in the background benefitting from their hard work, but would they have been as successful without them, who knows?

 

in my opinion, this thread should have been removed

Hi Brian,

but that arguiement doesn't work in that the main advertisment was not on the site but off it by way of a relevant link no different to the link in your signature.

As mentioned during the thread above (which I hope that you enjoyed as there's some quite funny twists in there) Taxassist, Certax and even Crunchers have been cited.

As such, the debate was not so much about franchising as a model was bad (different arguement) but whether this franchise which was the one that put their head above the parapet should have advertised here.

On the debate about free advertisments I personally have never removed threads that advertised something that was for the benefit of site members although I know that the training companies have had each others removed.

I think that such is more understandable in that if one training company is paying for advertisment and another is advertsing for free then that gives unfair advantage.

I can see the precedent that this thread sets but, and its a big but here, where a thread actually works in the complete opposit direction to its original intention then what is the point removing it.

In addition if you look at many of the initial posts made by software and cloud companies their inintial posts have come accross as advertising not dissimilar to this but then they went on to be helpful and active members of the site.

Should I have banned them at first post?

If I did that too haphazardly then the site content would be poorer, less people would visit and those who currently advertise would not.

It really is a fine balancing act to ensure that each thread is treated fairly on its own merit and I am always aware that keeping a good site is not dissimilar to a game of kerplunk where it only takes one wrong straw (or trigger happy moderator) to bring everything crashing down.

In this case lets agree that if the poster does not return and post some useful technical responses to peoples genuine self assessment problems that will occur by the end of this month then I will remove the link to their site... But the thread stays as its quite funny plus it annuls any advantage that the poster was seeking to achieve.

Hope that makes sense.

kind regards,

Shaun.

Spamkebab wrote:

---

"a newbie should not be allowed to post commercials. Come on forum moderators, lets have some proper moderating."


And a newbie shouldn't come on here ordering moderators around when they have no idea of the time and effort given, free of charge may i add, by the moderators.



There, i said it.

---

 

kjmcculloch83 wrote:

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I could hear your Basil Fawlty impression there Shaun. Good effort.

Spam: "And a newbie shouldn't come on here ordering moderators around when they have no idea of the time and effort given, free of charge may i add, by the moderators." - hear hear!

---

 

If I am not mistaken, BKN is a commercial organisation as quoted (from the about us page):

"BKN is a private enterprise, focused on offering commercial resources and support solutions to SME book-keepers and accountants."

Further more:

"A major component of BKN is The Book-keepers Forum"

So the £24 paid by members, a large part of that, by inference, must be going towards the forum. Hence, I am rather surprised to hear that the moderators, moderate for free. So my bad for not knowing that the moderators work for free.

Indeed to join here, it is quite tricky to actually register as a free member, the registration process is squarely geared towards a payment of £24. However, I did manage to bypass that obstacle and join as a free member.

I was actually thinking of joining as a paid member and paying my £24, but perhaps it might be prudent to be a free member as the largest benefit "the forum" is free and moderators are working free.

So thank you Spamkebab and Kris, I now don't feel too guilty for not being a paid member!

"Unless I have completely missed the point/plot."

I'd say you have.

Which is why jumping in before weighing up a situation usually ends up with bad results.

forum members have a cracking sense of humour and trust the moderators will keep up the excellent work so if a post you dislike remains on the forum there is usually a reason for this. Best to wait next time, read the responses and join in the humour.

I'm glad you feel 'less guilty'

;)

Vip,

I'm sorry for being blunt, but you're talking absolute nonsense.  It's easy to join as a free member, which is why the majority of member are.  Having been a member of this forum for 6 years I have never had an issue with Shauns moderating.

I'm with Spam on this, enter into the spirit of the site and you'll find it friendly and welcoming.  Keep your current attitude and that may not be the case.

Kris 

You complain about a 'newbies' post, that's okay.

I complain about a 'newbies' post, that's not okay?

This is going to be fun, i'm game for a laugh.

Yep, all just Waste Management Consultants.