office or home?

deborahcarpenter

Morning All,

I have beenworking from home for last 12 months and doing very well! However, there is a rather nice brand new 'business centre' just been built right in the centre of my town. I have had a look and been offered a starter office for a knock down price of £200 pcm inclusive of all bills, internet and phone rental (calls chargeable) it is a secure building with 24/7 access and has shared top of the range kitchen facilities, toilets and waiting area (leather sofas etc)!!! my question is shall i or shant i? Whilst i enjoy working from home i sometimes think it would be more profressional to have an 'office'. Also i need to think abou the extra £200 outgoing but i reckon i can do an advertising campaign and get some more clients to help cover the extra cost. How long did it take you all to get an office or did you start out with an office in the first place?
All opinions greatly received!!!

Deborah

PGM

So £2400 per month. Its a chunk of extra work to do, but not a massive amount which having an office should help pull back.

I'd be more worried about what they will charge when the economy picks up again, how knocked down are these prices compared to a possible full market rate?

If it goes up to £400/500 pcm over the next few years. That'd be in the back of my mind, and then it would be harder to move back to home.

deborahcarpenter

I believe the price is set for 12 months. I can see what you are saying about moving back home if it doesnt work out but it wil also give me a kick up the backside to go out and get some more clients!! and i do get easily distracted at home.

Monsoon

deborahcarpenter wrote: »

Morning All,

I have beenworking from home for last 12 months and doing very well! However, there is a rather nice brand new 'business centre' just been built right in the centre of my town. I have had a look and been offered a starter office for a knock down price of £200 pcm inclusive of all bills, internet and phone rental (calls chargeable) it is a secure building with 24/7 access and has shared top of the range kitchen facilities, toilets and waiting area (leather sofas etc)!!! my question is shall i or shant i? Whilst i enjoy working from home i sometimes think it would be more profressional to have an 'office'. Also i need to think abou the extra £200 outgoing but i reckon i can do an advertising campaign and get some more clients to help cover the extra cost. How long did it take you all to get an office or did you start out with an office in the first place?
All opinions greatly received!!!

Deborah

That's similar to what I did - found a tiny serviced office in town for £1000 a year. I'm now in bigger premises c. £5000 a year. I probably did 1 year working at home, then moved into an office.

Your £200 a month sounds like a good deal. However, like PGM says, I'd be worried how much it would increase in the future.

If you enjoy working from home and don't have difficulties with delf discipline and work/life balance, then I would consider staying at home just from the overheads point of view. There are pros and cons to each though. I can't get on with working at home so an office is a necessity for me.

jamesm96

The only thing I'd say is that we (not my own, tiny self-employment, I hasten to add, but the firm I work for) moved offices a year ago. We're a firm of chartered accountants with about 300 clients and we moved from fairly small, not very nice offices which were about £6k per year, to a much larger building with very nice facilities... it costs about £30k per year, but since moving and having a better presence we've probably taken on about £20k per year in additional recurring fees so the additional cost has almost been covered by by just being more appealing to clients (especially clients who have larger businesses).

I guess if I were making the decision I'd want to decide whether growth was what I was looking for or if I was happy with how things were and just wanted to maintain that.

M Norine

Interesting Topic
Although it depends on your circumstances; but if I were you I may ask myself how to work out some beneficiary tasks to cover the extra cost in the meantime and thinking the possibility of growth & success going forward in same time? i.e... Printing out low cost business cards with this cosy office address; then update my current clients and friends by giving these new cards. This may sound stupid but one of them can throw you in a haven if not the costly Google’s PPC
So I would say please do take the risk of £200 a month and have an office

deanshepherd

Go for it!!

It's a natural progression and I'm sure you'll love it. If not, then you are under no commitment to stay after 12 months.

burg

I started working from home about 2 1/2 years ago. At that point we used a garage attached to the house but access was through the main part of the house.

We moved in June 2010 to a new property and converted the garage but this time with it's own seperate entrance. This has worked well until now.

Working from home has been great as it has meant I can work around the kids school hours and have no travel costs.

However now it has reached a point where there is simply not enough room even though we run a paperless office and there is too much work to do just during school hours.

A client of ours has an empty office and we are moving in on 1 February. It sems like natural progression and apart from the traveling costs / times will be a good move.

I would say if the opportunity is there and you know you can make it work then go for it.

jamesm96

deanshepherd wrote: »

Go for it!!

It's a natural progression and I'm sure you'll love it. If not, then you are under no commitment to stay after 12 months.

Here here. And £200 per month is stunning value, assuming it's not a cupboard!