Cycle to work schemes - what's the best way?

hipslinky

Hi all, I hope you can help!

My very small firm (of eight staff) is thinking of joining a cycle to work scheme so that two or three of us can get bikes through it. The main problem is we can't agree on which scheme to go with, as we want bikes & accessories from different providers which are affiliated with different schemes. So my question is, is there much of a difference between the schemes other than where you can buy from, and it is that much difficult administrating the thing yourself and getting the company to buy the bike upfront (rather than faff around with vouchers etc) and then claiming back VAT, sorting out salary deductions?

Our HR is outsourced, and our financial controller is happy for us to go ahead with this as long as it doesn't generate a ton of paperwork for her. I'm happy to do the paperwork, if I can work out how (I'm a secretary), but wondered how straightforward it is to do things this way rather than join a specific scheme and have them take care of the tricky bits? Do they even make much of a difference to the admin involved?

Thanks for any advice you can offer! All comments welcome

Hipslinky

tinyfish

hipslinky wrote:

Hi all, I hope you can help!

My very small firm (of eight staff) is thinking of joining a cycle to work scheme so that two or three of us can get bikes through it. The main problem is we can't agree on which scheme to go with, as we want bikes & accessories from different providers which are affiliated with different schemes. So my question is, is there much of a difference between the schemes other than where you can buy from, and it is that much difficult administrating the thing yourself and getting the company to buy the bike upfront (rather than faff around with vouchers etc) and then claiming back VAT, sorting out salary deductions?

Our HR is outsourced, and our financial controller is happy for us to go ahead with this as long as it doesn't generate a ton of paperwork for her. I'm happy to do the paperwork, if I can work out how (I'm a secretary), but wondered how straightforward it is to do things this way rather than join a specific scheme and have them take care of the tricky bits? Do they even make much of a difference to the admin involved?

Thanks for any advice you can offer! All comments welcome

Hipslinky

My place of work uses Cyclescheme. A number of our staff have used the it and so far there have been no complains.

http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/

The site is easy to navigate and the FAQ is very good.

RufusA

IMHO go it alone.

The main (only?) benefits of using a scheme provider is if you have a large organisation and you need to keep tabs on 100's of employees and their requirements, need help with publicity and don't want to send cheques to lots of different cycle shops.

Scheme providers DON'T do any of the tricky bits (IMHO).

For a small company (any less than 50 employees) the extra hassle of filling in all the scheme provider contracts and paperwork with them completely overwhelms any help they can offer you, AND they will typically cream a %age off the bike shop for doing next to nothing (again IMHO).

The tricky bits are:

Salary deduction - HR will probably have this in place for child care vouchers etc.
Employee contract - HR one line variation typically.
Employee Rental agreement - Downloadable from a number of sources.
Credit License - Dft have a group one for up to £1k
Financials - capital allowances, VAT, fixed assets, all basic Accounts stuff.

If you have any problems there are plenty on here who can help with the specifics.

HTH - Rufus.

daniel_b

Interesting topic.

My gf is working at a new company, been there 2 months now, and cycles to work, one of only 3 people who do - I think there are around 2-300 employees, so that's around 1% then!

Anyway, looks like they want to get the cycle to work scheme sorted out, and of course as she is HR, she will be the main person who can sort it, and benefit from it as well, as she might either get a nice tourer, or a better road bike.

The first thing I said to her was not to go through Halfords.

I'm interested to see the option of going it alone without using a provider, how does that work?

We have a very good local bikeshop, who it would be nice to use, but then of course there are companies like planet X, and Edinburgh co-op who have there highly rated tourer.

Is it possible to setup a DIY scheme that meant you could buy from any of these companies, or would you have to set up an allegiance with one company?

Would appreciate any input,

Cheers

Dan

hipslinky

Thanks for the help everyone.

I've been looking at cyclescheme tinyfish, and it does seem to explain things clearly, but if there's a lot of paperwork to do regardless of whether you join a scheme or not, it seems like it might not be worth the hassle, especially as we want our bikes from different shops!

Our HR/payroll is outsourced, as we are such a small company, so whether that would make it easier or harder to set up, I'm not sure (probably easier, as they must deal with this sort of stuff for other clients).

Daniel B, the main benefit that I can see to going it alone rather than through a scheme is that you can get the bike wherever you want. Most of the voucher scheme providers seem to tie you into buying from a particular chain, or a list of member bike shops.

I'm not sure my boss is aware that the company will have to pay for the bike upfront, but as there will be savings for them in the long run in NI contributions etc, hopefully they'll be convinced.

The tricky bits are:

Salary deduction - HR will probably have this in place for child care vouchers etc.
Employee contract - HR one line variation typically.
Employee Rental agreement - Downloadable from a number of sources.
Credit License - Dft have a group one for up to £1k
Financials - capital allowances, VAT, fixed assets, all basic Accounts stuff.

Rufus, are you saying that these are the tricky bits which we would have to do anyway, even if we joined a scheme? If so, there seems very little point at all joining one, and much better to go it alone.

The other main person at my work who wants to join is itching to get this off the ground asap, but I don't think it'll be that straightforward!

If anyone else reading has any advice, please do post it! Meanwhile I'm going to start looking at getting the ball rolling - I'll let everyone know how it goes in case anyone is thinking of doing the same

biondino

A guy in accounts set up our work scheme (going it alone) and he found it easy and straightforward and very much worth it although only 3 bikes have so far been bought. There's no reason to pay an outside company to do it for you.

Captain Nemo

My company just turned it down. A rather large FTSE 100 company. Apparently they are worried about employees taking it up and then leaving without paying..... :x

fury21

Captain Nemo wrote:

My company just turned it down. A rather large FTSE 100 company. Apparently they are worried about employees taking it up and then leaving without paying..... :x

sounds like a poor excuse to me, especially for a large company.

All the hire agreements I've heard about state that if you leave before the end of the scheme, the outstanding cost will be deducted from your final pay and you may have to pay the extra if your final pay wouldn't cover the outstanding amount.

I'm quite sure that a large company would have the resources to ensure that this was enforced.


One note about Halfords is that they actually run 2 different schemes, one for companies with more than 1000 UK employees and one for companies with fewer employees. The latter is more restrictive as to what bikes you can purchase through the scheme (i.e. only those brands that Halfords normally stock or deal with). This difference was apparently not made clear to my company (with 70 UK employees) before they signed up.

GrantyBoy

Captain Nemo wrote:

My company just turned it down. A rather large FTSE 100 company. Apparently they are worried about employees taking it up and then leaving without paying..... :x

lame excuse. If someone was to do a runner without paying for their bike fully the compnay is entitled to deduct the amount from their finally salary pay cheque. Its all covered in the cyclescheme paperwork.
Basically it would be seen as a form of theft as techically the bike belongs to the company for the first year. Company could then chase the ex-employee through the cops/courts.

IanLD

My Orbea came from my employers Halfords scheme, but as it is a local authority, we must be on the larger and more flexible one.

I was concerned about it being Halfords, but their customer contacts were excellent and they sourced various options for me to consider (wanted road bike with Campag bits).

Bike is mine now once I've paid the final purchase figure and works out at about a 35% saving on RRP.

I bought my own jerseys etc as £900 for bike didn't leave much for anything else.