For reasons of transparency and because it might help anyone else thinking of starting a poetry competition, we present here what no other poetry competition seems to do: an explanation of the competition accounts.

The 2007 sonnet competition ran across the end of our financial year and so expenses that are yet to come are shown below the revenue surplus at the date of posting. A final set of accounts will be published in due course.

One important thing to bear in mind when reading the accounts is that while the competition entry fee was £7 per sonnet, there was a consistent '3 entries for the price of 2' offer and that when entries were made online, Paypal would deduct a transaction fee, a percentage commission, and in the case of non-UK currency transactions a further currency conversion commission. This is standard practice for e-commerce, but it meant that a set of 3 sonnets from an overseas entrant could reduce the revenue per sonnet to £4.41. These commissions are the reason why the entry fee revenue is not a multiple of £7. Open Poetry Ltd is not VAT registered, as while that would have enabled us to offset VAT on expenditure, it would also have meant adding VAT to the entry fee.