Price for lunch and dinner

[rainbowsdawn]

ive included my meals in with the fee but dont know what to enter in my accounts book for pirce of meals for each child, bit confussed soz

[Pauline]

Hi

Basically you need to try and work out a rough price for each meal, base the figures on what you buy to make the meal and then divide it by the number of meals it makes. Hard work but it's how the Inland Revenue like it done.

This is what the tax people say:

Food and Drink
If you make batches of food for the whole family and use half for the minded children, just claim half
the cost as business expenses. You need not keep a record of every spoonful of milk! It might be
useful to keep your supermarket till receipts for about 4 weeks after you start childminding to see
what extra items you are buying. You can calculate the cost of a meal like this:
A packet of 10 fish fingers costs £1.25. If a child eats 2 fish fingers then the cost is 2/10 x £1.25 =
25p. A 500g packet of frozen chips costs £1, then a 100g portion would cost 100/500 x £1 = 20p.
One yoghurt costs 30p. The cost of the food for this meal is 75p.

There is no flat rate allowance for the cost of a meal since no 2 childminders will incur the
same costs. Reasonable estimates for the costs of food and drink provided for the children
being cared for are acceptable and receipts \re not required but you must be able to prove how you reached your figures so till reciepts are helpful

[sarahnev707]

At a tax briefing a couple of years ago, the man said we should think about how much it costs by percentages like Pauline says but also to be sensible and not cost each meal differently

So we can, by inference, come up with one price for breakfast, lunch, each snack and tea which we use day by day (rather than costing out each meal)

I think breakfast = bowl of cereal, milk, 2 slices of toast, cup of orange juice and piece of fruit .... what would you pay for that in a cafe? I put it through my books at £1 (a tax bargain!)

Morning snack = fruit, cup of milk (1/4 pint), breadsticks & dip.... £1

Lunch = 2 slices of bread (organic wholemeal - over £1 a loaf), a filling (best quality ham, chicken etc), babybel or other milk product, a piece of fruit, fromage frais or yoghurt ... £2

Afternoon snack = same as morning

Tea = home-cooked organic meat ,fish or substitute, potato / pasta / rice product, 2 x fresh organic vegetables, gravy, fruit pudding, custard or other wet thing .... £3

I've been putting this through for a couple of years though and think it might need putting up so I'll do a cost analysis soon as O have been and rethink

Every day, when you have a child and mark it in your register, make a note of which meals they have eaten. At the end of each week, when you put the register details into the incomings section of your accounts, make a note of how many of each type of meal you have served...... if you're fairly anal about it, it's easy!!

Sarahx

[Pauline]

Yes that's the type of thing I do Sarah. Having worked out roughly what each type of meal would cost I then use that as a base for charging for meals.

What the tax office won't do is say that you can charge £xx for each meal because some people might do a sandwich while another might do a full organic three course meal!!

[rainbowsdawn]

ok thanks for you help, think thats what i will do, dont wanna sound cheap but dont want to be out of pocket either, thanks guys and must say im so glad ive found this site ;D

[susi513]

With the fishfingers example they give, they don't tell you what to do about the 2 fishfingers you dropped on the floor and had to throw away? Or the box you found at the bottom/back of the freezer that you bought for mindees meals but ought to be thrown out cos its been there so long?

If you buy a food product specifically in order to feed a mindee but it never actually gets eaten its still a legitimate business expense (unless you ate it ;D)

I've got 18 lunches to make next week. 18 x £1.40 = £25.20 doesn't go as far as you think it might! Mostly my meals for mindees are cooked separately from those of my family so I find it easy to shop separately - I stack childminding products at one end of the trolley & put it through the checkout first. Either subtotal it before carrying on with my stuff or pay separately. when dh shops I just go through the receipt & highlight all the childminding stuff & write the total.

For food I have bought solely to feed a mindee with eg
bunch of bananas (no-one in my family eats bananas) my accounts show 100% of the cost as an expense regardless of whether they all were eaten or thrown away.

For food i have bought which will be used for both mindees meals eg potatoes - I will usually buy a bag of potatoes for family and another for mindees but if I only bought one i'll put 50% down in my accounts.

Since I stopped "guesstimating" I've found my expenses have gone up quite a bit. And if the taxman ever queries it I've got all the receipts to show where my figures came from.