From Charles II to Charles III – keeping up with the times

We all know that change in a Livery never happens fast, evolution not revolution, and we like that. However, we have to change when circumstances dictate – we wouldn’t have survived for nearly 350 years if our forebears had avoided it. From carriages to cars and aeroplanes, for instance, and now carriages again, since a resurgence in the popularity of coaching. Needs must when the devil drives and we know that the world has changed a great deal in the past few years and like other countries we are faced with a cost-of-living crisis which all of us are feeling.

For at least the past three years, the Master and Wardens led by the Renter Warden of the year have been looking hard at our costs. In this review we can put our Charity Fund, which is freestanding, to one side. The fund is really only affected by the whims of the markets which are having a good run at the moment. The trick is to look for savings opportunities without compromising standards and quality. This deep dive into our finances not only highlighted the type of savings we were looking for but also revealed many inefficiencies in the way we run our ‘business’. In particular we were outsourcing quite a bit of our accounting function and, frankly not doing that very efficiently.

And so FAWG was born (pronounced ‘Forg’) the Financial Accounting Working Group. The first thing we noticed was that up-to-date accounting information was lacking at every moment in time. We decided that the responsible thing to do, rather than reinvent the wheel, was to talk to our friends in the Livery world, especially those without Halls and property. As a result, we have installed an accountancy system called Xero which many of our colleagues use. It is flexible, designed for an organisation like ours, enables us to enter the data as quickly and easily rather than giving it to someone else to manhandle at a cost and gives us real-time visibility of our current finances. That is just the start. Xero still has more to give.

Apart from wanting to keep you all informed about how the internal machinery works, the next initiative provides the opportunity to write this article and is a call to arms for our members – it is only right that you are given notice of a change that we are going to ask you to participate in.

Most of you pay your annual subscription by Direct Debit. We are too small to afford a Direct Debit licence and so once again this function is outsourced via our accountants to an agency at considerable cost to us. Once again, we have talked to our Livery world colleagues. There is a system called GoCardless which is a licenced platform designed for small businesses to operate Direct Debit collection for a modest transactional fee. Not only that but Xero is designed to connect directly with GoCardless, which has been a huge success for organisations and companies of our size and bigger. Using GoCardless to collect your subscriptions would save our Livery between £2,500 and £3,000 per year. In terms of your rights, you are still completely covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee. The process of change requires very little input on your part. We will write to you when it is ready to launch, no action will be needed from you unless you wish to opt out.

Gradum ad tempus (one step at a time) is the motto of FAWG but the adoption of GoCardless opens up other opportunities for paying for events and dinners nearer the time of the event rather than in advance. More of that for another day and never without your individual approval.

Our Livery has been slow to make use of some of the modern technologies available to organisations and businesses. We are not implementing these initiatives just for the sake of using them, we are making ourselves efficient, fleet of foot and cost-effective as any organisation, ancient or modern, needs to be in this modern environment. In the near future, FAWG will be looking at a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to better manage our membership data which is not in a mess but is scattered across three or four more or less manual databases. But, gradum ad tempus!

If you have any questions or comments, please address them to the Clerk at clerk@coachmakers.co.uk and he will ensure that someone from FAWG comes straight back to you.

PM Julian Leach
Chairman FAWG