October 2021 Update
Holding fees are no longer being charged on open jobs. If you have any queries regarding holding fees you have been charged in the past or are seeking tips on managing your open jobs, feel free to contact our Support Team.
We’d like to cover several important points regarding the recent health, economic and relief developments related to Covid-19.
We’re also rolling out some important changes to our service to offer relief on holding fees. This is to make our service more flexible for you as we all work through present events.
Our Service
As New Zealand’s largest and oldest trade marketplace, we’re committed to sourcing steady work for you over the coming months and beyond.
We have arrangements in place with our team to enable all staff to work from home. We anticipate no disruption to the accessibility of our service or support.
Service Changes
We are rolling out several changes immediately, to offer relief on holding fees in response to these events.
- You can now extend the free contact period by an additional month at a time, for any jobs that are being held up by factors outside of your control. You can continue to do this until you know the outcome of the job.
- We may contact you to see if we can assist, where free contact has been extended multiple times.
- We now highlight on the active jobs page, which jobs will incur holding fees within the next 7 days. This will allow you to easily manage jobs that need attention.
- The holding fees have been reduced to a flat $1 per month for any month. Holding fees no longer increase month on month.
Demand
My team and I are working hard to understand and predict the impact these events will have on demand, and the wider trade sector generally.
We have multiple marketing angles and contingencies ready to roll out depending on how events play out over the following weeks and months.
While economic softening and/or recession typically involves a slowdown across all sectors, the exact nature of this event may soften the impact on trades as people spend more time at home, and less on travel. There have been questions raised around the supply lines of construction materials, and we’re currently investigating anticipated effects to these.
I will continue to update you as market trends begin to emerge, additional information becomes available and we know more.
Health & Well-being Guidelines
At this stage, there hasn’t been any specific directive from the Ministry of Health restricting trade related activities. Though at this stage we don’t anticipate any directives being issued that will affect the ability to undertake work, if there are any developments, we’ll notify you as soon as they arise.
With this being said, our basic policy is for our trade partners to take a common sense approach to work in line with MoH guidelines. Please familiarise yourself with them here.
Please enquire as to your client’s health, and take all necessary precautions to protect yourself and prevent the spread of this virus.
We’re working on a more comprehensive set of guidelines in consultation with specialists, and will have these available next week.
Economic Response Package
With the current events’ effect on the trades sector yet unknown, I feel it’s important to acknowledge the Economic Response Package offered by the government on 17th March.
With $8.7b allocated to support businesses and jobs, it is advisable to check with your accountant the circumstances under which your business will qualify.
There are also several tax relief measures offered by the IRD. Again, check with your accountant as to their applicability to your business.
Thanks
Thank you for being with Builderscrack.
My team and I are totally committed to delivering work to you over the course of these events.
Builderscrack has been running since 2007. We’ve been through significant economic events over the last 13 years. We’ll work through this together too.
Take care and I anticipate sending out another update next week.
Jeremy Wyn-Harris
Co-owner & Managing Director
Builderscrack
