jlevene

Best advice is to start in the warehouse of one of the big companies and once you feel you have become invaluable and known, go freelance, only to go back to work at a large rigging company's desk when you get older when lifting kit doesn't float your boat any more. Happened to the best of us.

I knew about 4 Wall, saw it in LSI, just never knew about the troubles. Again, hats off to them for being honest as my company previously got knocked by so many going out of business, always after a huge event or big payment they received.

Firstly, you should always put discount as only applicable with a prompt payment within a certain time frame. If you issue a summons, you are entitled to interest under Section 69 of the Countty Court Act 1984 at 8% per annum (you probably won't get that much) and the Late Payment of Debts Act. "I never got the invoice" or "the cheque is in the mail" or "going on the next payment run" are all old and pathetic excuses. Send them a 14 day notice before action letter (by post and email) and if they don't respond issue a summons online here https://www.gov.uk/make-money-claim, and don't forget to include Statutory interest that is due from the date of the invoice.

Crikey, that answers a good question. Wish them all the luck and kudos for being honest.

Its called invoice factoring and it is only cheap for AAA rated customers, the rest you pay a high premium. Why would you need this from a customer who is guaranteed that they will pay, you need it for the ones that don't, and for them you pay a huge premium and commission. We did a trick years ago and told all of our bad customers that we got invoice factoring (we didn't) and used this bogus company as an excuse not to give credit or be very strict on payment deadlines, telling them we had to report late payment which would go against their credit rating, etc. All the bad payers starting paying with that.

I used to do legal work years ago and now live and breath data on a daily basis, so let me help you clear things up. Firstly, GDPR only covers personal information and not business, so you can publish business information, a catch all business email, phone numbers, etc. in open lists without having to obtain consent. However, personal information such as personal email addresses, home address, etc is covered by GDPR and must be protected. GDPR also covers paper information, so if you print or even write crew information with names, addresses, etc. on paper and lose them, you have breached GDPR. GDPR is not just computer data, it also covers personal information stored in a filing cabinet, phone book etc. so if you lose your FiloFax and don't report it to the ICO, you are in breach. Regarding call sheets. Whenever anyone gives you their email, you can communicate with them as it is deemed as they gave it to you, they consent to you communicating with them. A suggestion is that on any purchase orders or correspondence, maybe even on your email footer, add a clause stating that any email and phone number suppliers give you or you hold, they agree that it can be shared with other subcontractors who are on the same job and that you can communicate with them. It's not 100% compliant with GDPR, you actually need them to authorise it and keep copies of the authorisation. My personal opinion is that GDPR is a complete waste of time and doesn't protect you, it just gives EU states an easy way to issue fines. As an example, this week personal data of every Bulgarian citizen (a few million) has been leaked due to a flaw in the Bulgarian tax database, there is no punishment for negligence or recompense to all those affected. Last week BA just got fined for being hacked, the hacked data of 300,000 customers (most of which were businesses, so they shouldn't count) never got used and nobody suffered, yet BA were fined around £400 million. States can do as they wish, even share your and demand your personal data, so Bulgaria can demand all of your personal data (paragraph 4 or 5 of the Act from memory) from the UK, leak and sell it, and there is nothing you can do about it. Being practical, will the ICO chase and fine you for sharing phone numbers and email addresses on a call sheet without the proper consent, probably not, that is unless one of those people complain to the ICO. Also, don't print them, email them, as if they are left lying around or get lost, you are in breach of GDPR. If the contractor printed it and lost it, as long as you can prove you never printed it, you are fine (maybe add a footnote on each page saying that the PDF is a digital copy and that they should not print this, if they do they are responsible for disposing of it). To fully comply it not possible or reasonably practicable, more so for small businesses as GDPR is not like UK health and safety regulation that states "if reasonably practicable", which is one of the many reasons I feel it should be abolished. To be honest, you will never be able to fully comply, no matter what you do. Look at BA, with all their resources and money, they failed because they fell victim to a hacker who found a weakness.

The only one I know who hire out are Genie Events in Hertfordshire

Start using Purchase Orders as well. You will be shocked at the amount of invoices you receive that are higher than the PO you sent, or no PO was sent at all and it went to another company instead. When we switched to using POs at the last company I ran, we caught so much over charging and a few bogus invoices for hires we never used, we just enquired. Saved us a small fortune.

We used to use them. They are pretty reliable and nicely made. They are a good mid-range fixture and get my thumbs up.

You need a very long Allen Key (I think 2mm from memory) which you can get from RS. If you shine a torch behind the colour wheel, you will see a small black Allen bolt in the shaft. It's too far for a normal length Allen key (don't even try it, as you could break the filters), thus you need the long one to get to it.