Page 30 - Project Acanthus_Mainstay

Mainstay: Response to Tender | Project Acanthus - Part Two
29. Please outline your experience with month end financial reporting, providing a copy of your standard format and ability to close within seven days following month end.
Mainstay is happy to report on any agreed timescale that a client prefers. One of the processes that we have pioneered is ‘live’ commitment accounting. This allows us to create bespoke ‘live’ reports to include recommendations and actions taken. These can be produced to encompass bank reconciliation, creditors, debtors, cash held, voids, financial tendering, purchase orders, sinking funds, ancillary income and expenditure.
Our approach is to give you your financial reports in an understandable and clear format. We would provide all information to agreed KPIs and SLAs, which would
be tailored to meet the client’s individual requirements.
We use this system across our IPM portfolio and we meet a range of bespoke, agreed reporting deadlines, which range from weekly, to quarterly.
The timeline outlined above does not present any difficulties, as this is standard across many of our client requirements.
30. What’s your position on VAT on staff salaries? A team of circa 26 employees will be transitioning to the new managing agent, and we would be interested to hear how you have helped mitigate spikes in service charge costs for residents in similar situations.
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Unfortunately HMRC’s change of stance on VAT in November 2018 has had a significant impact on residential service charges.
At present we do not know the service charge year end for the scheme, but if TUPE is to be the way forwards, which we believe is the case, then VAT can only be managed by:
» Doing a staged TUPE process of staff by job description or category of work
» Deferring full TUPE to an agreed date so that impact to service charge is minimised.
As outlined earlier, a full appraisal of all staff, their duties, training, qualifications, and aptitude is a crucial element of any transfer. Equally we will review manning specifically, and whether cost savings can be made. Any findings and recommendations would need to be considered by the client, and potentially discussed with stakeholder groups.
As part of this project, we would review IT and other customer facing portal arrangements. Potentially, staff costs could be reduced by the introduction of revised processes that take account of current technological improvements.
Irrespective of TUPE, Mainstay would manage the onsite teams in exactly the same way. We would, therefore, take full responsibility. The only exception to this would be if we inherited a non-disclosed grievance.