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Increasing the Turnover of your Small Business
Membership of a Local Exchange Trading System can help you expand your business, smooth your cash flow, and provide you with extra market.
A LETSystem helps you to provide goods and services to any member of the system, which credits your balance. Over time you obtain goods and services from any other member of the system, for a debit against your account. This operates in parallel to the financial system; you don’t always need money!
Here is how it works. You need something that a member can provide. You contact them, and agree on what you want, and how much you will pay for it. You might also discuss how much "ordinary" money you might use. When you get the goods or services, you fill in a transaction slip to enable the system to debit you, and to credit them. You receive a regular statement of your credits and debits; how much you owe to, or are owed by, the members of the local system, and your personal balance. You also receive an updated directory of what services and goods are offered by LETSystem members.
Anything you provide for a credit instead of British pound can be balanced later by debits for what you need done - window-cleaning, book-keeping and stationery, or some artwork. The limits are defined entirely by the nature of your business, what you need, and what you are prepared to offer. Equally, your level of participation in the system at any time is entirely up to you.
Membership of a LETSystem can provide your business with more turnover, and a limited line of "credit". The system currency is not the same as money; there is no interest, and no inflation factor. Nor does the system provide any tax advantage. What the LETsystem does is let you use your assets, particularly if they are under-utilised because the external cash-based economy is not working too well. It can make the request for “freebies” or “donations’ easier to manage as well. You could even use credits as a staff bonus system.
Reports from around the world and the UK where this idea is being used show that because people see more options available to them, they spend their cash more freely. Tight or expensive money does not stop us trading.
Systems, which have a number of different small businesses as members are booming. Newton Stewart LETs has business members who…
· are glass art & jewellery designers
· run a town centre café
· develop websites
· run a market stall
· deliver business translations
· manufacture bathroom and kitchen tiles
· own a book shop
· deliver holistic therapies
· skilled photographers
· own a public house
· own boutique
While other members provide painting, bookkeeping, cleaning, computing advice, secretarial and personnel transport services, as well as carpenters and caterers and so the list goes on.
A LETSystem helps you to provide goods and services to any member of the system, which credits your balance. Over time you obtain goods and services from any other member of the system, for a debit against your account. This operates in parallel to the financial system; you don’t always need money!
Here is how it works. You need something that a member can provide. You contact them, and agree on what you want, and how much you will pay for it. You might also discuss how much "ordinary" money you might use. When you get the goods or services, you fill in a transaction slip to enable the system to debit you, and to credit them. You receive a regular statement of your credits and debits; how much you owe to, or are owed by, the members of the local system, and your personal balance. You also receive an updated directory of what services and goods are offered by LETSystem members.
Anything you provide for a credit instead of British pound can be balanced later by debits for what you need done - window-cleaning, book-keeping and stationery, or some artwork. The limits are defined entirely by the nature of your business, what you need, and what you are prepared to offer. Equally, your level of participation in the system at any time is entirely up to you.
Membership of a LETSystem can provide your business with more turnover, and a limited line of "credit". The system currency is not the same as money; there is no interest, and no inflation factor. Nor does the system provide any tax advantage. What the LETsystem does is let you use your assets, particularly if they are under-utilised because the external cash-based economy is not working too well. It can make the request for “freebies” or “donations’ easier to manage as well. You could even use credits as a staff bonus system.
Reports from around the world and the UK where this idea is being used show that because people see more options available to them, they spend their cash more freely. Tight or expensive money does not stop us trading.
Systems, which have a number of different small businesses as members are booming. Newton Stewart LETs has business members who…
· are glass art & jewellery designers
· run a town centre café
· develop websites
· run a market stall
· deliver business translations
· manufacture bathroom and kitchen tiles
· own a book shop
· deliver holistic therapies
· skilled photographers
· own a public house
· own boutique
While other members provide painting, bookkeeping, cleaning, computing advice, secretarial and personnel transport services, as well as carpenters and caterers and so the list goes on.