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Carpentry and Joinery Books - 1970's

Joinery Business Books

My Brother has been working on improving the appearance of our office area, so far he's made a new desk and made some display cases featuring some of our old business books from the 1970's. Aside from feeling under pressure to up my game in terms of presentation, I was very interested to take a look at the contents of the books. I'm not sure if any other businesses did things like we did, but these books represent how we created invoices and quotations for jobs. I will confess this method was still in place when I started in the office too. To call it a "method" might be stretching a point. Now, I have to be reasonably computer literate, but then, it was a case of write it neatly in a book and then get the office to write it up in a legible format and do the accounting side of things. When I say "office" I mean Gran or my Mum. These days that approach, with its multiple data entry, means that method had to stop but it has created and fun little vernacular record of work that was done.

Woodworking Book
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Interesting to see the pre 1973 world of Purchase TAX and then post 1973 when we adopted the European model of VAT. Further to that, a VAT rate of 8% in the late 1970's, as of 2016 it is 20%. In 1971 we charged a skilled woodworker at £0.90 an hour and an apprentice £0.36. These days, depending on task it could be between £15.00 to £30.00 depending on the task. Parana Pine was still a legal and relatively plentiful timber and also interesting to see a Quotation submitted to Esso Petroleum for work to a local service station. I must admit, part of me craves the simplicity of a few written pages in a book being all the paper work I'd need to do but at the same time things do change. Hopefully when clients and potential clients come in to visit they can see we've not been afraid to change with the times. Now, if only we could get that VAT rate back to 8%!

Woodworking Business Book 1970's
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