Everybody wants something for nothing, or if you can’t have it for nothing then you want it as cheap as possible? When contractors shop around for an Umbrella company to use it is
no different. But how do you find a cheap Umbrella Company?

First of all you have to define what cheap means in terms of an Umbrella. An Umbrella Company is there to employ you, for which they take a margin. Any Umbrella should be paying you as a 100% PAYE employee so this margin is the only place you can save money. There are issues with holiday pay maybe but any Umbrella worth their salt shouldn’t be holding this back from you anyway. So if your holiday pay is paid out each time you invoice it’s only the margin that affects your take home and so that’s what defines “cheap”.

How cheap can cheap be? Generally speaking the margin for most Umbrellas falls between £15 and £35 per week, some a tiny bit less, some a whole lot more. But does cheap mean value? Anybody can setup an Umbrella Company, anybody. It doesn’t mean they have the experience, processes and insurances in place to look after their employed contractors in the correct way. Several of the largest Umbrella companies in the UK grouped together to form an “authority”, the FCSA which was designed to give contractors, agencies and end clients some peace of mind in that they would be working with “compliant” Umbrellas. For the record the FCSA is not government ran, is a paid membership and was recently included in a huge NHS scandal for the way some MEMBERS were withholding pay from contractors. You’ll also find that the margin with FCSA approved Umbrella’s falls within certain limits, realistically it has to in order for them to pay their membership fee, or again in reality for the contractors to pay the membership fee. An Umbrella Company only makes its money in one way, the margin charged to contractors. So the Umbrella company market is split in 2, FCSA and non FCSA. With prices to match. Can you find a cheap FCSA approved Umbrella?

Is there such a thing as a compliant (processes audited, full insurance etc, experienced HR staff etc) cheap Umbrella company? Yes. It’s for exactly that reason that Quad Management was setup with direct involvement from contractors with experience of the UK contractor market. By doing the maths, working out the overheads, seeing what was the minimum we could charge and still pay experienced staff to manage your employment we came up with a figure that would also allow us to give contractors a free month (Look we’ve been there, we know that in a perfect world most contractors would prefer IR35 to go away and to continue with their Limited companies so have obvious doubts about using an Umbrella, the free month lets you suck it and see). We then went to LawSpeed,
simply put the most respected recruitment and employment law firm in the UK and said this is what we want to do, we want you to review EVERYTHING from our processes, contracts to our website. And they did, and we made changes where recommended. What were we left with? A fully insured, compliant, process approved Umbrella Company for what we believe to be the cheapest viable margin you’ll find, only £15 per week.

Looking for that cheap Umbrella Company? Then Quad Management has you covered every step of the way and we know we’re doing something right. We are not going to lie, it’s an extremely tough market out there right now but we are doing something that not many are doing, growing!