I’m trying to persuade my HR dept to join the cycle to work scheme. There is a few people interested taking up the offer (at least 5-6 people approx 10% of workforce).

BUT last time I tried a couple of years ago they fobbed me off with saying it’s too much paperwork.

How much paperwork is involved and is it a pita or does pretty much run itself once set up

it’s pretty easy once set up, and pretty easy to set up to be fair.

Employee goes to bike shop and chooses bike. Employee goes on cyclescheme website to request bike. Employer approves request, cyclescheme send employer an invoice, company pays invoice, cyclescheme sends voucher to employee, employee gets bike.

What the employer has to do (After signing up) is get the employee to sign the hire agreement (Which cyclescheme provides), pay the invoice and deduct the payment each month from the employees salary and deal with the final “Residual value” payment.

I deal with it and it’s a very very small amount of hassle really.

I’ve done it, and it’s not a huge amount of hassle, but you do need to put in place some processes to make sure you start and stop the salary deductions at the right time. If your company operates Child Care vouchers, then they’re already doing something similar.

Using a commercial middle-man company like Cyclescheme might reduce the hassle slightly, but they will also mean that you don’t save as much as you could (they take 10% on every transaction from their retailers, plus the overall payments are more than they need to be). If you’re doing it, I’d suggest running the scheme yourself. It’s really not that hard.

Unless someone in HR wants a new bike, trying to persuade them to do it is probably the wrong approach. Persuade someone senior in the company that it’s a good idea, will improve staff welfare and staff retention, will be an added benefit to list when hiring new staff, etc. etc. and then they can tell HR to do it.

Talk with your local LBS, see if they’ll do it all for you?

My old LBS did.

Where are you?

I do it. There is no need for paperwork or hassle or middle men.

-Employee / company buys bike
-Invoice gets paid by company (or employees expenses if they bought it)
-Company then deducts one 12th of the amount from gross salary
-Company sends a letter to employee stating that gross salary is reduced by the amount the bike cost – payment taken monthly
-Company sends a letter to employee stating its their bike, look after it, dont loose it and you can buy it off the company for 5% at the end of the year.

Its very simple, two letters, one gross salary deduction per month. End of.

Its very simple, two letters, one gross salary deduction per month. End of.

You might want to review what you’re doing.

During the first year, it’s a rental agreement, and it’s governed by the Consumer Credit Act. There’s certain paperwork that has to go with it. It’s not difficult – online retailers like Wiggle have sample contracts that you can use.

Technically you can’t promise in advance to sell the bike.

When you do sell the bike to the employee, you have to charge fair market value. HMRC would not consider 5% after 12 months fair market value.

Unlikely that you’d get pulled up on the first two, but an HMRC inspector might well pick up on the last one.

Also, if you’re going to charge 5% at the end, it would make sense to only recover 95% of the value of the bike over the hire period. In fact, thanks to employers NI, you can make the payments even lower, and still have the company come out even.