Work related finance issue. Anybody can shed a light 🙏?

[UserLibra78]

I was required to raise invoice from my company to the business team to pay for any outstanding balance. The cost was set out in the contract.

I sent the business’s finance team a provisional invoice to avoid the issue of them questioning the cost further down the line.

They agreed and confirmed the provisional invoice and gave me the go ahead with official invoice.

I then had to liaise with my finance team to raise the official invoice.

Guess what? Once the customer received the Invoice, they start queries about some of the items listed that shouldn’t be there.

AIBU to be annoy at them for not raising the issue prior to the official invoice?

My finance team wants them to pay regardless as it is apparently a rigmarole to amend the official invoice 😞

Anybody got any suggestion in terms of hitting back to the sponsor in addition to the AIBU?

The most straightforward way would probably be to credit the whole of the incorrect invoice, and issue a completely new one. This is so that when you look back at the figures you will have two amounts that cancel each other out and the one valid remaining one. It will make it easier to work out the history of the account later, in two or three years time, when you will have forgotten what happened!

@SeeminglyOblivious

I wouldn't know what I was supposed to do with a "provisional" invoice, so it would probably get overlooked or queried

How unusual for a finance director.

I deal with finance departments daily in banks, schools, marketing businesses and many others. The term 'provisional' attached to invoices is bandied around frequently in my experience. The implied meaning of 'this is an FYI of what's coming, please have a quick check to make sure it's OK before we issue the final version' is usually well understood by finance teams without further explanation.

So you mean a breakdown of costs or a valuation? It’s not an invoice, provisional or otherwise. Invoice is a specific term meaning a specific thing.

@topcat2014

What is a provisional invoice? I'm a finance director and it is not a phrase I recognise.

Did you mean pro forma invoice?

Should you not have agreed the quote fully before the work?

The aim should always be to ensure it is easy for the client to get the invoice through their systems first time.

I wouldn't know what I was supposed to do with a "provisional" invoice, so it would probably get overlooked or queried

Thanks for giving me the official term.

The provisional invoice is for the company’s admin staff to review and confirm all required tasks have been performed before I sent the official invoice to the Finance team to raise the finalised Invoice to their Finance team.

So I raised the provisional invoice to their Finance team. They reviewed and confirmed a few items that shouldn’t be there then ask the admin staff to confirm. The admin confirmed the task then ask me to raise the official invoice.

I did and the business’s Finance team is now questioning why are those items still listed in the Invoice. The admin staff from their team then confirm that actually yes the Finance team is right those items shouldn’t be there and want me to remove these items.

Apologies if it sounds convoluted. I am typing all these in the train 😒

@Calmasasleepycat

The most straightforward way would probably be to credit the whole of the incorrect invoice, and issue a completely new one. This is so that when you look back at the figures you will have two amounts that cancel each other out and the one valid remaining one. It will make it easier to work out the history of the account later, in two or three years time, when you will have forgotten what happened!

Thank you very much. I will of course not instruct my Finance team to do so but is great to know that it can happen this way.

I will ring the Finance team up on Monday

[quote KiloWhat]@UserLibra78 because until the job is 100% done they don't know if they are satisfied to pay the invoice. And they are your customer. Its just part if the job.[/quote]
All tasks have been performed. The issue here is that this should have been raised on 2020 during the pandemic. But since then there have been a several changes of person before me to pick up this. I was left with this backdated invoice.

Thank you at least I know I shouldn’t take it personal now.

@Oblomov22

I'm confused. Are you new to the job? You sound inexperienced. This is standard. They approved the draft invoice? Are you now saying the draft invoice was wrong? Things were included that shouldn't have been?

Why aren't you angry with the client who is being cheeky. if they had any queries they should've raised them at the draft invoice stage. not now. If you've approved the draft invoice, it's very cheeky to then question the final invoice.

If you need to email the finance team asking for certain bits to be now removed from the invoice then just do so.

But I'll be taking a hard line with the client and sending an email politely saying I'm sorry but since you approved the draft invoice we were assuming that you agreed all costs already specified?

I am indeed new and inexperienced, hence this thread. Please do not shoot me 😜

The scenario that you laid is exactly what annoyed me. However I am the not the client but the person who issued the invoice. The client is now refused to pay the invoice that they agreed.

However several posters have since pointed out that is their prerogative to refuse the invoice.

I am now contemplating should I use your response in the last line before I succumbed and go back to the Finance for a re-credit

@Oblomov22 I am interested in your approach (and that’s not say I am ignoring other poster’s advice!)

May I know if you will cc their line manager if you are going down this route? Is that not a sneaky way to cause trouble that will bite me in the butt further down the line?

Everyone seems to be getting a bit confused. Yes the technical terms in finance are important.
If you want to be pernickety! You raise a quote. The quote should be agreed by the client. Then an invoice. 'Provisional invoice is quite unusual / not well known.

Well. Who is the manager who provided the service? What do they think? I'd speak to them. They should really be approaching the client, with the line I suggested, not you.

They should be asking them : oi you cheeky monkey, how can you refuse to pay the invoice when you approved the quote?

Or rather which bits are you disputing?
If you are now refusing to pay for 5 hours because you think we only worked 10, not 15, or you don't think you should pay the £69.99 for the ..... delivery of signed documents .... because you think we should swallow that cost, and they weren't expecting to be billed for it..

Then all those discussions are for the person who arranged the job/ the person who did the job, to negotiate, talk to their manager About whether they think they should hold firm and insist the client does pay or whether they are prepared to back down and let the client get away with not paying for these things and swallowed the cost themselves.

But these issues are for the manager he's been providing the service to decide. With his boss. It's not something the OP should be dealing with.

@Oblomov22

Well. Who is the manager who provided the service? What do they think? I'd speak to them. They should really be approaching the client, with the line I suggested, not you.

They should be asking them : oi you cheeky monkey, how can you refuse to pay the invoice when you approved the quote?

Or rather which bits are you disputing?
If you are now refusing to pay for 5 hours because you think we only worked 10, not 15, or you don't think you should pay the £69.99 for the ..... delivery of signed documents .... because you think we should swallow that cost, and they weren't expecting to be billed for it..

Then all those discussions are for the person who arranged the job/ the person who did the job, to negotiate, talk to their manager About whether they think they should hold firm and insist the client does pay or whether they are prepared to back down and let the client get away with not paying for these things and swallowed the cost themselves.

But these issues are for the manager he's been providing the service to decide. With his boss. It's not something the OP should be dealing with.

Thanks for this. Unfortunately my manager is incumbent at the moment, which left me to sort of pick up the pieces.

Even if he is here, he will still think I should just shoulder the blame (which in a way I have admitted that I should have triple check their confirmation-are you sure x3) and absorb the cost, which my gut feeling told me I shouldn’t.

Like you say I am new and inexperienced so my industry experience still need plenty of tuning to weed out this bulls.

I still think they shouldn’t be able to get away with agreeing with the provisional invoice then couple of months down the line, go into specifics and questioning the items that they should have done in the provisional stage.

I agree OP. Then go back to them and ask why they are now disputing it?

@Oblomov22

I agree OP. Then go back to them and ask why they are now disputing it?

Thanks for the response. Is worth a try. The worst that can happen is no.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Stuff like this happens all the time. I’m sent invoice. I scan over it, it looks fine so I send it to our finance team who will go over it with a fine tooth comb (that’s their job!) and will find mistakes I didn’t. They will query with me and I go back and query with the company. Certainly nothing to be upset about.

@FawnFrenchieMum

Stuff like this happens all the time. I’m sent invoice. I scan over it, it looks fine so I send it to our finance team who will go over it with a fine tooth comb (that’s their job!) and will find mistakes I didn’t. They will query with me and I go back and query with the company. Certainly nothing to be upset about.

Once you scan over the invoice do you confirm it with the Client or with the Finance team?

The issue here is that “you (obviously not you) have scan over the invoice and okay it with the client. Then when the client sent over the final invoice to be pay by your company, your finance team decided to go over it with again and making queries. That’s the part I am annoy about. What is the point of the initial confirmation?

The customers system will have a purchase order.

That purchase order needs to be confirmed as received by whoever in their organisation wanted the goods or service.

Your invoice needs to match this receipted purchase order so that you get paid.

So either you went over your quote value or have not finished all the work.

I'm not clear where you sit in the chain. Your finance team need to speak to their finance team to find out the query and then work to resolve it.

Believe me most finance departments just want their purchase orders booked in and the supplier invoices to match so they can record the invoices.

It is a mechanistic process with little discretion. The bigger the company the more exacting you have to be getting the invoices right that you send in.

But, this is bread and butter stuff. Nothing to get worried about. It will get fixed.

The provisional invoice probably never even got sent to the finance team.

It is so,so common for someone to provisionally ok a schedule of costs but when the actual final invoice is sent for something to be queried.

The upshot is this.

Is the invoice a true and accurate reflection of the work agreed and carried out? If so the client needs to pay

If however there is a true discrepancy and there is an item that has been invoiced that should not have the client is perfectly entitled not to pay regardless of any so called earlier approvals.

Even in the construction industry with Pay Less Notice rules if a mistake on a valuation is found further down the line the client has the right to recoup those costs.

@topcat2014

The customers system will have a purchase order.

That purchase order needs to be confirmed as received by whoever in their organisation wanted the goods or service.

Your invoice needs to match this receipted purchase order so that you get paid.

So either you went over your quote value or have not finished all the work.

I'm not clear where you sit in the chain. Your finance team need to speak to their finance team to find out the query and then work to resolve it.

Believe me most finance departments just want their purchase orders booked in and the supplier invoices to match so they can record the invoices.

It is a mechanistic process with little discretion. The bigger the company the more exacting you have to be getting the invoices right that you send in.

But, this is bread and butter stuff. Nothing to get worried about. It will get fixed.

Thanks for the info.

Finance is just a small part of my role but with bigger impact than the rest of my main job descriptions combined. I never receive any training regarding invoicing so it has been a steep learning curve for me.

The purchase order is not as clear cut as the customer may think they owe us this amount but if further down the line more tasks were required, especially safety issues, I have the right to invoice in addition to what laid out in the purchase without seeking approval from them first. The cost will then be added to the subsequent invoice. This has been specified in the contract signed.

Half of the items on the list have not been carried out (due to safety issue, outside of our control, contract specified non payment for event within our control, not outside) while the other half have been carried out in addition to the schedule (no approval required, is in the contract). All these tasks have been completed back in 2020. Nobody has manage/ bother to invoice them.

But that’s not the AIBU now. The issue here is that they had approved the invoice on their part. The Fiancé team did received the provisional invoice. I did stress the importance of checking and reviewing them before I submit it to my Finance team. They took 4 weeks to say yes go ahead. Now they came back and say nope. That’s what annoys me the most!

You may have to break this down into chunks, getting agreement to any easy bits and invoicing those off.

It is painful, but will get fixed. As, presumably, we are talking about largish firms the 2020 thing is not an issue. People don't get to wriggle out of accepting an invoice because a relatively small amount of time had elapsed