I would think that hiring a contract tech would be the way to go. No insurance or benefits, they just get a percentage of the tuning fee. I did that the first 5 years I was in business here. If you pay 60% as Wim suggested, you can be sure they will keep a list of your customers, and when they have a list big enough, they'll quit and work the list on their own for 100%. If you pay 75% or so, and make the appointments (keeping contact with your customers) and also do the book keeping on billed customers, the tech might be willing to settle for loosing some of the fee in exchange for the book keeping and scheduling. If you hire someone as an employee, you'll be paying benefits, taxes, insurance etc. and they'll still want to keep the customer list and go independent. I don't think most employees understand how valuable the benefits package is and only see how much less money they take home than the tuning fee. dave _______________________________ David M. Porritt, RPT dporritt@swbell.net <mailto:dporritt@swbell.net> Meadows School of the Arts Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275 _______________________________ -----Original Message----- From: owner-pianotech@ptg.org [mailto:owner-pianotech@ptg.org]On Behalf Of ANRPiano@AOL.COM Sent: Sunday, August 01, 1999 5:05 PM To: pianotech@ptg.org Subject: Employees Dear list, Having built a rather sizable business without ever working at a store or someone else's shop I am at a loss as to how to work out certain aspects of my employee's compensation. I am not looking for anything which will get us into trouble, just some general guidelines or examples of other's experience. As my shop work has grown I have hired people to fill whatever my needs were there, but I no longer have the time to adequately service even a fraction of my tuning customers. I don't want to lose contact with all these people because they are a great source of work for the shop. I have been considering hiring a full time tuner for quite some time but cannot figure out a compensation package. Should I pay them a straight hourly rate or a commission or combination? What kind of commission should I pay taking into consideration the cost of scheduling, advertising, insurance, taxes, good will, the risk of losing a customer? I have never been involved in such a situation nor have I ever talked to anyone who has and have really no idea what to do. I would appreciate any input. Andrew Remillard
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