To want to tell them "this isnt my whole job!!!!"?

[NapQueen]

I work for a small company in am admin role. Because we are so small, I do admin across the whole company so writing agendas, taking meeting minutes, arranging appointments, responding to complaints, hr stuff like sickness and training, formatting reports and policies plus all the grunt work (opening up, post, brews, etc). I also handle all the invoices, coding them and chasing signatures etc.

We work in partnership with a very big company who are in the same business, and use them for certain elements of the job.

I liaise quite a lot with their finance team, but am getting to the point where I just feel the need to repeat "this isnt my whole job" when they need finance info etc.

I get the paperwork, I cost it, get it authorised and send it to them. They run the payments. If I have queries I send them and at some point they respond. But they are no doubt busy so I just get on with other things til I hear back (very rarely do I need this).

If they have a query they just seem to think I can look into it there and then. So I get a query and say "leave it with me I will look into it". Then have a day of meetings in and other requests from my actual employers which I need to meet. And if I dont get this info back to them today? Nothing happens. It will just wait til tomorrow.

But they seem to think that im there solely for finance. We are tiny!!! If we hired someone to only do my job itd be a 8-12 hour contract max and they would still have to wait for the info. Yet because I am there all the time it seems expected that I can just do it.

Rage!!!!

Well, YANBU. So, why don't you ?

YANBU but it might be better to speak to your boss first? I know where I worked previously, turning round to outside companies and telling them that they had to wait because you were prioritising something that was of no relevance to them never went down well, even if you were only being honest about your role.

This should be fairly simple to resolve; it's about priorities and setting expectations of when you can answer their query.

Firstly, are you sure your other tasks are more important than promptly responding to their queries? This is about payment which is generally high priority.

Assuming your priorities are right, set the expectations appropriately with this company. Rather than 'leave it with me, I'll look into it', make it 'Leave it with me, I'll get back to you tomorrow with the info'.

I've had jobs like this before with lots of different stakeholders and responsibilities- and I'm sure they each think their need is the most pressing !
I learned to say "when do you need it by?" It was rarely immediate so then say "well I can get it to you by xyz time " which was usually fine
That way you're managing expectations as well as your own time whilst also gaining the respect of pushing back a little bit

Thanks.

The company isnt calling about payments to them - I do always try and prioritise paying the bills to all the suppliers. They just sort of corroborate the payments so send a list of stuff which has come out of the bank that they havent received paperwork for and ask me to provide it.

My line manager has told me "its ok if it has to roll over to next month". And everything i do or know about is sent to them when I do it so any random transactions they are querying are normally from someone else or some sort of direct debit I know nothing of.

I think a bit of it stems from lack of understanding - this element of my job is totally new to me, I havent had any real training, and wasnt even in my job description. So add that to it being one of a hundred things done in a week and I usually feel incompetent.

I have people, both in the organisation and outwith, who seem to think i'm just sitting twidling my thumbs waiting for their queries. My boss has to remind me i can say no or wait.

Can you tell them you deal with those things at a certain time of week? Like mondays and fridays are finance?

They probably want the paperwork for audit trail / bank reconciliation purposes. If they're a large organisation they will do bank recs daily and whilst it may not be a huge deal to you, I know that if a payment left my employer's bank account without correct supporting documentation it would be a Big Deal and there would be pressure to address this very quickly. If your boss says it's fine that that's what you work to, but just thought this might explain context from their perspective?

Yeah I think they must do this sort of stuff daily, they are huge compared to us.

I think YABU to a degree, it's normal in small businesses to do duties outwith your job description, and if you're already doing admin and invoice related tasks it doesn't seem like this is a massive stretch. If you limit all of your duties to what's in your job description you'll never progress, you won't be adding value, upskilling and will just be seen as the difficult person.