Still plugging away at these finances folks. I had hoped to sort it out this weekend.
The outstanding issues that I'm trying to resolve at the moment are:
1 PCB cost with olli's groupbuy? 3.60 assumed for now based on BF spreadsheet. How did the shipping costs work out for orders paid direct to olli? Did BF ever receive some funds from olli for on postage/distribution? How much did this work out to?
2 PCB GB shipping money passed to BF, no idea how much was given to BF for this.
3 BF how much was spent on the AU/UK adapters? DDW did you collect any of these from BF when you did the handover?
4 Aussieampbloke - were the extra NJM4556 noted by your name paid for? I don't think they're included in the Mouser order. There is exactly 110 ordered, 2 required per kit.
5 Moonshad0w and FredtheDog had no listed shipping costs beside their names in BF's finances spreadsheet, unclear why.
6 Satchel cost vs postage cost. BF notes 40 satchels purchased for 470.68. This doesn't even line up with the 10.56 per package posted that BF quoted.
With parcel postage is the cost charged when buying the satchel or putting it in the mail when actually posted? I wonder if the 40 listed means that BF was allowing for postage each way from the front panel machinist. I am trying to establish how much was actually spent by BF on this and how much was left for DDW to pick up the tab! DDW PM me on that one if you'd rather.
7 Duty/GST cost is listed in BF's finances spreadsheet but no source information backing it up. BF: A receipt for this would be good.
8 BF: Is the 445.9 spent on batteries inclusive of shipping to Aus?
Now for a few rambling notes on what I've worked out so far:
- BF did note actual amounts paid quite well and included tips in his finances spreadsheet.
- I am fairly certain that the parts order from Mouser has sufficient items to complete 55 normal kits. I hope BF follows this up with Mouser for replacements.
- BF buying extras initially really snowballed when he started giving refunds.
Total spent on extra components is ~ $190
BF made a mistake in allocating fixed costs evenly per order rather than on value or order basis. Once he had to give refunds these costs were pretty much a write off with no easy way of recouping except for getting new orders in. This was exacerbated because he wasn't charging the packaging/postage costs to anyone adding spare items to their order. This left him out somewhere between 30 - 70 overall. By now he's somewhere between $200 and $250 out of pocket with no way to recoup the part of that money associated with fixed costs.
I think there is something funny going on with how BF budgeted/costed the original orders. It doesn't add up, at the moment I have re-worked all of the costs that I think were budgeted for and it is now more than the amount collected (including tips) and that is before he started issuing refunds. It isn't immediately obvious where he's gone wrong unfortunately.
So far I have worked on receipts, establishing real costs of everything and trying to compare total budgeted for each item to a combined bottom line figure on collected amount for each expense. With the outstanding issues above I'm not very confident in any conclusion though.
PM me if you'd like a copy of my current working spreadsheet.
I'm going to email BF and see if he has any info that might help out.
Tomorrow night I am going to re-work the costs / budgeted values against each individual and see if I can highlight the source of the problems.
The outstanding issues that I'm trying to resolve at the moment are:
1 PCB cost with olli's groupbuy? 3.60 assumed for now based on BF spreadsheet. How did the shipping costs work out for orders paid direct to olli? Did BF ever receive some funds from olli for on postage/distribution? How much did this work out to?
2 PCB GB shipping money passed to BF, no idea how much was given to BF for this.
3 BF how much was spent on the AU/UK adapters? DDW did you collect any of these from BF when you did the handover?
4 Aussieampbloke - were the extra NJM4556 noted by your name paid for? I don't think they're included in the Mouser order. There is exactly 110 ordered, 2 required per kit.
5 Moonshad0w and FredtheDog had no listed shipping costs beside their names in BF's finances spreadsheet, unclear why.
6 Satchel cost vs postage cost. BF notes 40 satchels purchased for 470.68. This doesn't even line up with the 10.56 per package posted that BF quoted.
With parcel postage is the cost charged when buying the satchel or putting it in the mail when actually posted? I wonder if the 40 listed means that BF was allowing for postage each way from the front panel machinist. I am trying to establish how much was actually spent by BF on this and how much was left for DDW to pick up the tab! DDW PM me on that one if you'd rather. 7 Duty/GST cost is listed in BF's finances spreadsheet but no source information backing it up. BF: A receipt for this would be good.
8 BF: Is the 445.9 spent on batteries inclusive of shipping to Aus?
Now for a few rambling notes on what I've worked out so far:
- BF did note actual amounts paid quite well and included tips in his finances spreadsheet.
- I am fairly certain that the parts order from Mouser has sufficient items to complete 55 normal kits. I hope BF follows this up with Mouser for replacements.
- BF buying extras initially really snowballed when he started giving refunds.
Total spent on extra components is ~ $190
BF made a mistake in allocating fixed costs evenly per order rather than on value or order basis. Once he had to give refunds these costs were pretty much a write off with no easy way of recouping except for getting new orders in. This was exacerbated because he wasn't charging the packaging/postage costs to anyone adding spare items to their order. This left him out somewhere between 30 - 70 overall. By now he's somewhere between $200 and $250 out of pocket with no way to recoup the part of that money associated with fixed costs.
I think there is something funny going on with how BF budgeted/costed the original orders. It doesn't add up, at the moment I have re-worked all of the costs that I think were budgeted for and it is now more than the amount collected (including tips) and that is before he started issuing refunds
. It isn't immediately obvious where he's gone wrong unfortunately.So far I have worked on receipts, establishing real costs of everything and trying to compare total budgeted for each item to a combined bottom line figure on collected amount for each expense. With the outstanding issues above I'm not very confident in any conclusion though.
PM me if you'd like a copy of my current working spreadsheet.
I'm going to email BF and see if he has any info that might help out.
Tomorrow night I am going to re-work the costs / budgeted values against each individual and see if I can highlight the source of the problems.
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If the order incurred a GST charge, which it ought to have being over $1000 if mouser put the correct value on the Customs declaration, the order would have been held up and there would be paperwork for him to go and pick the order up and pay the GST. How did the order ship? if Fedex then he would have Fedex paperwork for this charge. Though do not be surprised if it got though without being caught.
Postage -the $10.56 was a number someone posted as the postage allowance. The 3kg eBay click and send satchels were about $5 for a 20 pack and about $9.35 to post. I'm on my phone again not a computer but I'll list what I have paid so far. BF did not have any allowance to send the front panels separately from the rest of the kit, that was my suggestion to get the ball rolling. It cost me about $25 for 25 envelopes with printed stamps and a further 20 stamps if needed. What isn't used out of that I will get back off of BF.
Ok, I should be able to sort the order tallies tonight.
Did BF give you postage satchels? Or did you have to buy more? He had a photo of a big stack of them and was spruiking about them for months while he was sitting on his hands not ordering the rest of the things.
I have emailed BF asking for clarification on a few of the specific questions out of the list above. Hopefully at least a few of them get some clarification.
They were the eBay click and send satchels, check the Australia post website they were all 3kg ones and about $5.00 a 20 pack. When you print the sender details is when you pay for them. I don't have the invoices with me currently at mannum bit I'll be able to check my bank statement tonight and give you the details.
I forgot to mention yesterday, I will post my cut of the mouser order so that people know where the part substitutions were if that will help? I have mouser order with the O2 Design ref beside each line of the order.
Yep, paid for.
I'm putting through my own mouser order tonight, so i'll just grab some more. Very glad i had a squiz at this thread before doing so
I don't need a refund for the missing $$$, just allocate that towards some of the extra costs being incurred.
Thanks! How did you send? and how do I track?
Aus Post track says "A tracking ID is invalid or exceeds 50 characters - please correct"...
And do I owe you any money? you didn't respond to my PM... (I don't mean whatever the group will owe you for your troubles and out of the pocket money, I mean for expressing it if you did)
Firstly, let me say thanks for doing this! I know it must not be any fun at all...
Regarding your questions, well this is mixed, some did pay for postage and some didn't (I think). If you look at the first post in this thread BF says that if you are part of the GB you do not need to pay post. I ordered before it was organised and paid 4.95 pounds for two boards including shipping. Don't know what the arrangement between BF and Ollie was though.
Personally, I've paid BF a total of $205 ($5 tip) for x2 full kits delivered.
Let us know if there is anything at all that we can help with.
Tonight's post bought to you by The Pixies - Where is My Mind.
Ladies and Gents,
My bedtime has passed. Meeting with some management types first thing in the morning should be a hoot.
I have received no information from BlueFusion in response to my enquiry that I sent now roughly 24hours ago.
I am still cracking at this bastard.
What I can tell you is this:
There are some shonky orders in this list that had me thrown for a while:
- The only MoonShad0w on diyA is spelled differently to the spreadsheet. Moonshadow user profile shows them to be in the UK. MoonShad0w with the same spelling as per the spreadsheet actually shows up on some of BF's previous laser forums, perhaps just a coincidence. BF did not include an actual amount paid against this order. He did allocate a value and highlighted it as paid.
- There is no user named 'Things' on diyA. Try googling for 'Things' - my google-fu isn't that good to come up with anything meaningful or related to our purposes though. This order is listed as paid by $80 via paypal.
- BlueFusion did not record any payment for his contribution to the GB for parts he ordered for himself.
Unless I'm mistaken in the first two instances there was no packages to go to either of these characters from DDW's distribution?
DDW: did nst's package ship domestic or international? I got confused when reading some of the earlier posts, he's listed in all of my spreadsheets as international shipping, I am unsure if I should be counting him for domestic or international shipping now.
DDW: did you deal with an order for Little Fish? I've noted a question beside that because when I went looking I couldn't track that one down.
My opinion at this stage is:
After taking these anomalies into account I believe that BlueFusion should now owe 100% of the expenses incurred by DDW, the money collected from each individual still in the GB should cover this.
BlueFusion collected $20 / plugpack that he has not delivered. There is 28 of these.
These ideas are based on this:
Amount Collected: $4,669.60
Amount Refunded: $425.00
Amount Spent Fulfilling Remaining Orders: $3,622.76 (This includes money spent by DDW)
Cash Available: $621.84
Value of Outstanding Plug-pack Refunds: $560.00
Value of Extras purchased: $189.26
This actually covers most of the fixed costs except the fixed cost portion of refunds that BF refunded without any way of recouping those costs. This covers the import duty/gst also.
It is also worth noting the following is the theoretical qty of spares before extras were allocated by DDW when packing orders. (I haven't had a chance to sort out a list for this, DDW do you have a summary of how many of each 'spare' was sold to who? Otherwise I'll go through the thread and determine what I can).
Total Spares Before Re-sale:
Normal Parts Order 6
Extra Resistor kits 2
Enclosure 6
Batteries 32
Front Panels 6
PCB 7
I now have a honking great convoluted spreadsheet that shows:
- O2 des ref against each line of order, qty required to fullfill BF's 55 normal kits and 25 kits of extra resistors.
- A summary analysis based on actual costs at total amount orders, this was a deadend but let me calculate the cost value of each item more accurately.
- Tonight I've set up Indiv Budget vs Actual for each item for each individual order, including splitting out refunds.
- A running list of questions/issues I'm not sure on.
AND
- A final analysis sheet that pulls the numbers above out of the other sheets.
I'm almost certain there are some mistakes in there, I am reasonably confident the mistakes are small though. Anyone who'd like a look at the convoluted web of crap that I've made PM me. I'm happy to field as many questions as you like. Though I have no time tomorrow night to do more number crunching.
Where to now? My mind is frazzled.
BF owes all shipping charges incurred by DDW, then $20/plugpack originally ordered and a front panel each ordered. I'll work that out later on a per person basis.
EDIT: It is very likely the above is not my finest literary work, let me know if something is straight up nonsense please!
Ladies and Gents,
My bedtime has passed. Meeting with some management types first thing in the morning should be a hoot.
I have received no information from BlueFusion in response to my enquiry that I sent now roughly 24hours ago.
I am still cracking at this bastard.
What I can tell you is this:
There are some shonky orders in this list that had me thrown for a while:
- The only MoonShad0w on diyA is spelled differently to the spreadsheet. Moonshadow user profile shows them to be in the UK. MoonShad0w with the same spelling as per the spreadsheet actually shows up on some of BF's previous laser forums, perhaps just a coincidence. BF did not include an actual amount paid against this order. He did allocate a value and highlighted it as paid.
- There is no user named 'Things' on diyA. Try googling for 'Things' - my google-fu isn't that good to come up with anything meaningful or related to our purposes though. This order is listed as paid by $80 via paypal.
- BlueFusion did not record any payment for his contribution to the GB for parts he ordered for himself.
Unless I'm mistaken in the first two instances there was no packages to go to either of these characters from DDW's distribution?
DDW: did nst's package ship domestic or international? I got confused when reading some of the earlier posts, he's listed in all of my spreadsheets as international shipping, I am unsure if I should be counting him for domestic or international shipping now.
DDW: did you deal with an order for Little Fish? I've noted a question beside that because when I went looking I couldn't track that one down.
My opinion at this stage is:
After taking these anomalies into account I believe that BlueFusion should now owe 100% of the expenses incurred by DDW, the money collected from each individual still in the GB should cover this.
BlueFusion collected $20 / plugpack that he has not delivered. There is 28 of these.
These ideas are based on this:
Amount Collected: $4,669.60
Amount Refunded: $425.00
Amount Spent Fulfilling Remaining Orders: $3,622.76 (This includes money spent by DDW)
Cash Available: $621.84
Value of Outstanding Plug-pack Refunds: $560.00
Value of Extras purchased: $189.26
This actually covers most of the fixed costs except the fixed cost portion of refunds that BF refunded without any way of recouping those costs. This covers the import duty/gst also.
It is also worth noting the following is the theoretical qty of spares before extras were allocated by DDW when packing orders. (I haven't had a chance to sort out a list for this, DDW do you have a summary of how many of each 'spare' was sold to who? Otherwise I'll go through the thread and determine what I can).
Total Spares Before Re-sale:
Normal Parts Order 6
Extra Resistor kits 2
Enclosure 6
Batteries 32
Front Panels 6
PCB 7
I now have a honking great convoluted spreadsheet that shows:
- O2 des ref against each line of order, qty required to fullfill BF's 55 normal kits and 25 kits of extra resistors.
- A summary analysis based on actual costs at total amount orders, this was a deadend but let me calculate the cost value of each item more accurately.
- Tonight I've set up Indiv Budget vs Actual for each item for each individual order, including splitting out refunds.
- A running list of questions/issues I'm not sure on.
AND
- A final analysis sheet that pulls the numbers above out of the other sheets.
I'm almost certain there are some mistakes in there, I am reasonably confident the mistakes are small though. Anyone who'd like a look at the convoluted web of crap that I've made PM me. I'm happy to field as many questions as you like. Though I have no time tomorrow night to do more number crunching.
Where to now? My mind is frazzled.
BF owes all shipping charges incurred by DDW, then $20/plugpack originally ordered and a front panel each ordered. I'll work that out later on a per person basis.
EDIT: It is very likely the above is not my finest literary work, let me know if something is straight up nonsense please!
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One more thing
I will post tomorrow on what the BoM is from this GB based on the Mouser order. This will mean you don't have to go hunting through the BoM substitutions options. I'm not sure if BF labeled O2 design references on the packages, in which case my post could quickly become redundant.
Its quite important that this is done by as many as possible.
Having looked through the Mouser order the parts should all be there, so we have three possibilities:
A. Mouser made a significant number of mistakes
B. BF made a significant number of mistakes
C. Both of the above.
I will post tomorrow on what the BoM is from this GB based on the Mouser order. This will mean you don't have to go hunting through the BoM substitutions options. I'm not sure if BF labeled O2 design references on the packages, in which case my post could quickly become redundant.
Its quite important that this is done by as many as possible.
Having looked through the Mouser order the parts should all be there, so we have three possibilities:
A. Mouser made a significant number of mistakes
B. BF made a significant number of mistakes
C. Both of the above.
Just remove the spaces from the tracking ID
Thanks for the info on how ollie's pcb GB was supposed to go down, as always I think we that are left now do not know how that part worked. Perhaps when BF returns he can clarify.
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