Membership & Money Matters

A warm welcome to all our new members, & also those who have rejoined after a period away. Look forward to meeting you all at a Club event.

As I type this the current membership is 358, & just over half of this number were due for renewal in July. Thanks to all those who have already done this, but there are still some outstanding, & I sent out reminders by email a few days ago. If you have not yet responded to the reminder then please do so asap, otherwise this will be the last magazine that you will receive, & you will no longer be able to access the benefits of SLOC membership.

A very significant number of payments to the Club for membership, parts, production certificates etc are made by PayPal these days, & whilst this is an easy & convenient method to both make & receive payments, I need to ask that everyone always uses the “Friends & Family” payment option so that the club does not pay any fees. If the “Goods & Services” option is used the club will lose at least 2.9% of the total, & if the payment is from outside of the UK there may also be an additional currency fee of 2%. In keeping costs down for members as much as we can, we don’t charge anything like commercial mark ups on parts or other items that we supply (our average gross profit on the trading account is currently around 25% - which is of course all reinvested back into the club) & we really cannot afford to lose the PayPal fees as well. Payment by bank transfer is generally fee free of course, but we do pay banking charges of 50p on all cheques submitted, & 1.5% of any cash deposited (there is still an HSBC branch in the High Street where I live in Rushden - but this is only open for restricted hours so I don’t know how much longer it will be open – all the other main stream banks have gone) Many members will know that we do have a mobile card reader so that debit / credit cards can be used at shows & club events as an additional payment facility where the card holder is present (& there is either wifi or a good mobile phone signal) This is a non-contract system, so there is no monthly payment etc, & we only pay a small percentage on each transaction. The payments then appear direct in our bank

account around 24 hours after the transaction is done.

Thanks for helping with all of this.

Our financial year has just ended (31st August) & I am now in the process of collating all the necessary figures to pass to our accountant, who will prepare our statutory accounts as required for an incorporated company. Some early headlines from these results :-

Sales revenue – just under £19k

Gross profit on sales – a little over £5k (this is taxable)

Other income – around £10k (this is not taxable – largely membership payments)

Total costs – circa £13k

Overall net profit – something like £2k (this is around £2k less than last year)

The full / final accounts will be presented to the members at our AGM next year.

For those who want to use their cars for track / competition events (here & on mainland Europe) I can recommend Lotus On Track “The track day club run by, and for Lotus enthusiasts (lotus-on-track.com)”. I’ve attended a number of events over the summer in my old Elan, & they are well run / organised, friendly, reasonably priced, & generally only Lotus cars are involved (plus Caterhams of course) Not seen a Sunbeam, & I’m sure they would attract a lot of interest from others if any turn up. There is clearly a close connection with Lotus, & some Lotus employees are involved, plus at a recent day on the Lotus test track at Hethel, those present had access to part of the new – very impressive – administration / reception area, & a free lunch was provided (it was a scorching hot day & I killed a set of semi slick / medium compound / road legal tyres keeping up with the way more modern machinery!!)

Thanks as always for your ongoing support.

Dave Merlane