Subscription Changes - Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to frequent questions our members have asked us about our changes in the way we calculate members' subscriptions.
If you have another burning question that you'd like answered, please email membership@cooperatives-uk.coop or call 0161 246 2900 to speak to us.
We have varying levels of staff during the year. How do we calculate our subscription?
To ensure consistency, members should take figures from what they report in their annual accounts or report with regards to employees.
If you don't report employee numbers in your annual report or accounts, then use the number of employees at the date of your of year end as your annual figure.
We have some full time and some part time staff. How do we calculate our subscription?
We follow the Government's guidelines on what is defined as a full time employee and what is defined as a part-time employee. Any employee working 30 hours or more is defined as one full-time employee. Those working less than 30 hours are defined as part-time, and are classed as half a full time equivalent.
So, Total number of full time equivalent employees = (Number of full time employees) + 0.5 x (number pf part-time employees).
What happens if a co‑operate joins part way through the year?
When a co‑operative joins, we calculate the subscription based on their turnover and full time equivalent employees, and then pro rata the fee for the time remaining in the year. This ensures that most of our members work to a January to December membership year.
Did you consider other ways of measuring a co‑operatives ability to pay - for example Gross Profit?
We did look at the various ways that other membership organisations work out subscriptions, including gross, trading/operating and net profit.
Following research and testing across all our members that this change affects, we concluded that turnover seems to meet the requirements of fairness and ability to pay better than any form of profit.
Gross profit is not directly linked to or fairly reflects an organisation's ability to pay. The way profit can be calculated varies and is often open to interpretation and in those organisations where the cost of sales is high, for example in a service based organisation, the relatively low 'profit' does not often reflect the organisation's ability to pay or address the issue of fairness across the diversity of our members.
Furthermore, it is open to a degree of interpretation, and is not verifiable, leading to further confusion and a factor which Co‑operativesUK could find difficult in determining. For some of our member it may be a negative figure, again not reflecting an organisation's ability to pay.