To expect an invoice to be paid quicker than this?

[Oilpyi]

I secured some funding from an organisation for a community interest project. A bit last minute one off at the end of the financial year, a lovely unplanned extra. The funding was secured in early March, all paperwork forwarded on 10th March. The invoice for the provider of the project had to be paid beforehand, by the 17th March and was confirmed as paid on the 10th March in the paperwork. All receipts etc have been confirmed as accepted.
My invoice to the funding provider was also marked as due now, I was expecting they’d be wanting to process it before the end of the financial year.
A month and a half on and their ‘finance department has not yet scheduled the payment to your account, I will confirm with you once I have a date for this’.
Is this the norm? It’s really screwing us over now because we now are facing the point if we don’t have the payment soon it impacts on other planned projects being able to go ahead as the money is tied up.

Does your invoice not have payment terms on it?

Depends what company / organisation you are dealing with and what you have agreed. The company I work for has 60 days payment terms from submission of invoice, unless agreed otherwise upfront

Your invoice should have a payment date on it, surely?

I invoice clients and give them seven days from the date on the invoice.

They are a public body, outside the terms stated now- but they just seem to thing it’s fine. I can’t see a recourse

Like pp it really does matter what payment terms are in your agreement. What date did you send your invoice? Businesses often have standard payment terms like 30 days or 60 days and they will stick to those regardless of the financial year. These are often business days as well so for example if you sent your invoice on 17th March it wouldn't even be due for payment until next week...

I have chased, reminded. The invoice has clear stated terms. They’ve accepted it all...
Just... argh.
I used to work in a school and the local authority would do this too with invoices, months and months of just ignoring them.

Yeah technically they should but realistically, people don't. We have a few customers that run 3 months behind. I have another customer that ends up taking about 6 months, 3 emails, 2 phonecalls before they pay.
You just have to keep emailing and calling. Make sure you put the amount and your bank details in every email, aswell as a copy of the invoice, the less they have to think the more likely you get paid. Send the email while you're on the phone and confirm they receive it.

A lot of places pay 90 days regardless of what your own payment terms are. Especially public bodies and larger companies.

Also, if you are a new supplier that will add extr a time as they like to fuck about pretending they have a system to follow.

If you want paying, ring them every day, ask for the payments manager.
Basically make a pest of yourself and they'll pay just to get rid of you.

I have worked in purchase ledger and credit control for 20plus years.

Im not surprised. I've worked in the public sector for years and there is so much red tape around payments.

An example of an organisation I used to work in:

1. need all sorts of documents to set up as new supplier eg company info and bank details on letter headed paper
2. Head of Department would authorise.
3. raise a purchase order
4. Head of Department to authorise
5. send invoice to Finance
6. finance to organise payment
7. Head of Finance to authorise
8. payment made on next pay run

The caveat that this organisation had was that invoices would be paid within 60 days and any supplier who worked with the company had to accept that or they wouldn't get the work.

I used to work in purchase ledger and it was basically my job to take the calls of people wanting payment and give them excuses of not paying / make them think we are going to pay them don’t. It’s shit.

Can you threaten to remove services? This was the only thing that would have got you paid at the place I worked.

@purpledagger yes, sounds like school services. I think I’d just forgotten what it’s like having been out the loop for years- lesson learnt. I got carried away with the opportunity.

Argh.

@purpledagger

Im not surprised. I've worked in the public sector for years and there is so much red tape around payments.

An example of an organisation I used to work in:

1. need all sorts of documents to set up as new supplier eg company info and bank details on letter headed paper
2. Head of Department would authorise.
3. raise a purchase order
4. Head of Department to authorise
5. send invoice to Finance
6. finance to organise payment
7. Head of Finance to authorise
8. payment made on next pay run

The caveat that this organisation had was that invoices would be paid within 60 days and any supplier who worked with the company had to accept that or they wouldn't get the work.

Can you not think of any reason there might be a strict set of controls and checks and balances in a public sector organisation in regards to spending?

@BakedTattie it was a one off. I have no leverage at all.

Sounds frustrating OP, they must know when their next pay run is due, although they probably have standard payments terms on there which usually are pretty long, they could try and give more of an indication.

If you have clear payment terms and they have not sent you different payment terms that override them, then as soon as the payment is late under your terms you could issue a claim through the small claims court.

But you need to be clear on whether they have different terms that they have sent you, and whether you are willing to burn bridges with them.

As a less aggressive next step, you could email them and effectively say they have one more week for you to make payment and then, if you have not received full payment by 5pm on x date, you will have no choice but to issue a claim against them for payment. You could also ask for the contact details of e.g the FD as you wish to elevate the issue. In my organisation if an issue like this is elevated far enough, it always gets sorted.

What @purpledagger said. I used to work for public service that had this sort of procedure to set up a new supplier AND you had to justify adding a new supplier to the system in order words none of the existing suppliers could do what you wanted. It was a serious PITA.

I also just found this with a quick google which may help you - “ Through the Public Contract Regulations 2015, public sector buyers must include 30-day payment terms in new public sector contracts; and require that this payment term be passed down the supply chain. Public sector buyers must also publish annual reports on their payment performance.”

www.gov.uk/guidance/prompt-payment-policy

If they would be covered by this, you may want to point it out to them and ask how you make a formal complaint about breach of the policy

90 days is fairly standard for big organisations, unfortunately. That's how they get rich, when they're basically shafting the self-employed. You will need to keep chasing it, so you have a paper trail that you haven't let them off, but yeah... It's just how they work. Agree that you need to start sending them letters warning them that as they've not kept to payment terms, you may have no recourse but to pursue the debt through other means, etc.

It is so shit though when you get treated like this - especially when you're trying to do a good thing!

If it's local authority they pay whenever they get around to it, and no amount of calling, emailing, getting small claims involved will change the archaic engine that is their procedures department. Invoices take 3-6 months despite our terms being 30 days.

My company are arseholes and will not pay any sooner than 90 days regardless of what your invoice terms are. I've dealt with many an annoyed supplier. Very irritating, sorry!

I once interviewed a potential accounts assistant who was working in NHS/local government or similar.
Her attitude was that if you'd missed the due date for payment, processing and paying would not count towards the target of number of invoices paid on time.... so ignore it.
She didn't get the job.

I have very short payment terms on my invoices, as well as a clear schedule of late payment fees (off the top of my head I think it's 8% + bank rate, the permitted amount for freelancers). I note it in my email when I send the invoice and ask them to agree...and then the day after it fell due I politely remind them of it, usually gets it paid quickly!