To think you can’t get arsey about an unpaid invoice...

[Merryoldgoat]

... if you’ve never checked to see it’s been received?

Someone popped into my office today to ask if there was an issue with payment. My clerk is working from home so I said I’d check.

As I’m bringing up the account he said ‘it’s from Feb 20’.

I won’t bore you with the entire conversation but since he’s supplied his services for around 10 years, and his bills are always paid within 2 weeks, isn’t it reasonable to think he might’ve noticed sooner than 13 months and check we’d received it?

He said ‘I thought I’d check before sending you a rude letter’ which just irritated me.

Obv this isn’t a big deal but I’m irked.

@Cadent

I work for a big company, if a supplier doesn't send an invoice, it would not get logged in the system. The onus is on the supplier.

And if you get statements from suppliers do you check the statements against their account on your sales ledger and ask for any invoices you are missing?

Do you check purchase orders & goods received, and if goods have been received weeks ago but not invoiced, do you not chase that up with the supplier?

When goods have been paid for in advance on proforma, do you not subsequently ask for the VAT invoice once goods/service has been received?

sales ledger purchase ledger

I think they should have chased it earlier, but I’m a bit baffled as to why it’s annoyed you enough to write an aibu. These things happen at work. It’s not the end of the world

It seems you both have systems that aren't thorough enough, but more to the point, he did actually do exactly what you are complaining about him not doing .

You said he should have checked before getting start and he literally said he thought he should check before sending start letter!

Also if three lost in three years then maybe his is this years lost invoice and yet you are assuming he never sent it.

50:50 as far as I can see.

No i just think you are a bit of a dick for not covering your own arse!

Start = arsey

@BoyTree

I never thought there would come a time when the highlight of my day was an online accountancy pissing contest.

I think you've just highlighted exactly why I hate accountancy. It's FULL of this same pettiness and oneupmanship

I don't work in Finance, but they do have a PO system. However, for a lot of work, the supplier sends an invoice, we raise a PO against it, and ask supplier to add the PO to the invoice.

If the supplier doesn't send an invoice for ad hoc work, no one would think to chase it up.

And the reason why he hasn’t got paid for over a year is???
I’m pretty fed up with people like you in my day to day job that needs “ chasing “ every month, I do not want to chase for MY money every month when you received ( read receipts) the invoice and you know you need to pay it .

@Emeraldshamrock

His credit control department must be useless if it wasn't on the remittance. His approach was very rude.

His credit control department might have been furloughed, had to start working from home or since been made redundant. The invoice fell due for payment in March last year, right at the time of the first big lockdown.

I noticed a huge increase in foul-ups and late payments by our customers at that time. It only started to level up around May/June when people had got their act together and working practices sorted out.

I just don't get this. Everywhere I've worked you match delivery notes to purchase orders and invoices. If you have anything that doesn't match up you flag it as being a problem. The system existed in everyone before I ever worked there!

In fact it completely baffles me why anyone wouldn't operate the system to ensure everything matches and is accounted for! Like completely blows my mind in a utterly basic minimum level stuff you should be doing kind of way rather than a sophicasted high end system for big companies. I've always been private sector and worked for small companies!!!

After 10 years, he's obviously good at what he does.
Like a lot of self-employed people, paperwork is not his forte.

Sounds to me like his accountant has realised invoice(s) are missing.
BTW, s/e tax year can be any period they choose.

I have worked in private sector, charities and local authority, tiny, massive and in between.

Only the LA had a purchase order system. And it was a joke because it was done retrospective loads.

I worked for an a company with over £1bn turnover and they didn’t operate one either.

I appreciate your experience differs but it’s not THE experience and it’s not automatically wrong to operate another way.

I reckon it’s because it’s year end. Maybe he’s a small business and so works on a cash basis, which could be why it wasn’t picked up last y/e - he might have presumed the cash was imminent.

Either way, if you’re happy you owe the money then just pay it - no point in harming business relationships over something so minor - you’re clearly happy with him if you’ve used him for 10 years, so if this is the first issue in all that time I wouldn’t give it another thought tbh

@pompey38

He didn’t send the bloody invoice - if he has I’d have paid him in 2 weeks like I always did!

He’s not worked in a year because his service hasn’t been allowed until now.

It’s not in my interest to delay payment to anyone. It creates distrust between customer and supplier, it creates more work and generates bad feeling.

As I said upthread we have money so we pay and in good time.

How exactly was he arsey.
He came to the office to check if you had received an invoice, because he didn’t want to send you a rude letter. Is it the threat of a rude letter, that made him arsey?
As a small business owner myself, I would prefer to speak to someone directly before issuing final demand letters. Does that make me arsey?
Tbh reading this thread It’s you that is coming across as hardwork and quite frankly, arsey.

@MrsGradyOldLady It's not pettiness and oneupmanship, although it may look like that to the layman/woman.

It's about being consistent, methodical and accurate, having a meticulous attention to detail, sticking to a routine, having the correct procedures in place, and adhering to them. Although it may appear pernickety, much of what we do is governed by law, so that's the way it is.

Please give OP a break! Yes he was an idiot to come in with that kind of attitude. Simple reminder to say payment is due on said invoice would have been politer. I don't think OP is being unreasonable by not appreciating his attitude.

If he is completing a self assessment, that would be for tax year 19/20, so perhaps this is the reason for him chasing the invoice now.

@Nocar

How exactly was he arsey. He came to the office to check if you had received an invoice, because he didn’t want to send you a rude letter. Is it the threat of a rude letter, that made him arsey? As a small business owner myself, I would prefer to speak to someone directly before issuing final demand letters. Does that make me arsey? Tbh reading this thread It’s you that is coming across as hardwork and quite frankly, arsey.

I know that some companies would have just sent a stroppy letter after 12 months threatening legal action tbh!

The vast majority of the public sector, private and charities we worked with also had PO systems (including sole traders).

Clearly this is freaky despite working in three completely different sectors!

shrugs

We once had a very snotty letter about school fees we hadn't paid. We hadn't paid them as hadn't received any invoice in the months the kids had been out of this awful school. We could have paid in full that day but chose to pay monthly.

[quote emptyraspberry]@MrsGradyOldLady It's not pettiness and oneupmanship, although it may look like that to the layman/woman.

It's about being consistent, methodical and accurate, having a meticulous attention to detail, sticking to a routine, having the correct procedures in place, and adhering to them. Although it may appear pernickety, much of what we do is governed by law, so that's the way it is.[/quote]
I'm not a layman. I've been qualified ACCA since 1996 and been thinking all day how tedious it all is 🤣

@Nocar

He tried to give the impression it was this Feb’s invoice so he kept dodging my questions ‘did you email it to us or put it in the pigeon hole’, ‘did you send direct to us or x? Because as I first thought it was recent, I wanted work out where the disconnect was.

Then it clicked as he couldn’t have worked in February as we were still closed to most pupils and his service wasn’t permitted until March 8th

So I asked to the actual invoice date and he said it was Feb 2020

A bit more back and forth but he was defensive and I checked and said we’ve definitely not had it but send copy and we’d get it sorted ASAP.

He then said ‘good job I popped in or you’d have got a rude letter’ and it irritated me as it just seemed bit nasty.

We’re a 2 person team - I’m extremely accessible and we don’t piss about with paying people; I didn’t like the implication we were hard to get money from as one of the most important things I do is make sure people get their money on time whether it’s employees, temps, suppliers or anyone else we owe money to.

@SunshineCake

We once had a very snotty letter about school fees we hadn't paid. We hadn't paid them as hadn't received any invoice in the months the kids had been out of this awful school. We could have paid in full that day but chose to pay monthly.

I work for a private school - my default position if fees haven’t been paid is the invoice hasn’t been received. Snotty letters are never necessary.