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 figures below cover the period from first working on organising the competition in the summer of 2006 through to 30 August 2008 when, apart from any extra anthology sales to come, the costs are pretty much all known. Only matters like 2007-08 accountacy fees are as yet unknown (the competition ran across two financial years: 2006-07 and 2007-08).

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.