Childminders Club: Expenses.....

[HellyBelly]

Hi, need your help again (pretty please!)

What do you put down for your expenses when it comes to food and drink? Obviously a lot of things get shared so how do you determine what's consumed by the mindee only?

Any help would be great!

If I would usually buy 2 cartons of juice, but I am now buying 4 cartons cos of mindees I just put down the 2 extra cartons. I don't think you have to be exact, I just estimate.

Thanks feelingold.

TBH, never really made mental note of stuff I buy for us only so it's hard to guess.

I'm sure one childminder said they just do a certain charge for meals i.e. £xx for breakfast, £xx for lunch etc etc.

Oh well, I'll continue to highlight my receipts and try and work it out - just thought there might be an easier way?!

Thanks

Technically, if you had to show your accounts to the tax office, you would have to be able to demonstrate (through receipts) what you had purchased for use by mindees.

I have a friend who had her accounts checked (routine, nothing dodgy!) and there were some heated debates about how to decide who had or hadn't used toilet paper!

I tend to keep as many receipts as I remember to, and the final monthly figure tends to be an average of them.

You're thinking of KatyMac.
See her post of 7:36 on 28 June on this thread

No idea on what the official tax view is - you'd have to ask her.

I'd have to demonstrate that a meal cost what I indicated

So for a Breakfast for an over 10 might cost 1.25 eg bacon sarnie, or large bowl of cereal with f/f milk, a yoghurt, half pint of OJ and 2/3 slices or toast would cost 1.25 - reasonable I would have thought

and that for an under 5 it would cost 75p well I think I could justify that

btw I'd have to have some choice in - I can't assume that krispies would do I offer 3 or 4 selections

So rather than trying to cost it each week from your receipts, can you write down some typical meals, cost them up and find the average?
So if BF is cornflakes find out how much a box costs, how many bowls you'd get from that box (weigh one bowlful and divide the total weight of the box by that) and therefore how much a bowl of cornflakes costs. PLus milk, juice, toast and whatever else. Work it out for a few different bf combinations and find out what's average. Probably a bit of a pain to do, but once it's done, you can forget about it (redo it next year as prices change).

Basically - yes except I just guessed and thought about how much it would cost to buy

Thinking about school lunches and individual boxes of cereal

hellybelly i never keep receipts for my mindee even for big items like buggys i have never been asked for anything.you could try rounding your food bill up and dividing it by how many people eat at your house.I have friends over for lunch and include this as expences as it is a friend to play with mindee.