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Outstanding Invoices


paulears

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Now that I use FreeAgent for my accounting, I'm made aware of far more things than my old system. one that's shocking me a little is how much outstanding money I always seem to be owed. FreeAgent matches the bank payments to invoices but shows me an outstanding balance in the corner and the amount is annoying me. I'm not earning huge amounts of money, but the balance continually owed rarely drops below many thousands. I'm guessing this has always been the case, but I'm now more aware of it. FreeAgent also tells me how many are over the 30 days, and again, far more are now later than that. Is this just my mix of clients, or are all us self-employed people facing increase amounts of money carried forward all the time?
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You are not the only one who is owed money ranging from 10's to thousands.

 

Some companies / people try and ignore or they genuinely think they have paid for the services but actually haven't.

 

I have never used freeagent but have been considering it for some time now. I have always been on top of my finances as I use good old excel and highlight every client I have worked for with different colours. Some people I have worked for will ask for a payment plan to which I don't mind but everytime they send me money by BACS, which is my preferred method of payment, will get a receipt with a statement too with the amount left to pay. I have got into a really good knack of tracing and chasing as when the wife is having a good moan or watching really low IQ tv programmes then I will be at the desk with the music blaring.

 

If companies or individuals do have an issue paying then I do allow for issues to arise but if they are taking the biscuit then I will send out a registered letter plus an email. Recently I had to take a company to a small claims and now waiting on a judgement as their offer of repayment was a tad of a joke with the amount owed.

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If you allow any credit this is invariably going to arise to a greater of lesser extent. It all depends on how long you are prepared to be an interest free banker to the slow paying clients. Leaving aside the accounting package a spreadsheet simply showing the total invoices at any day/week against the income for that day/week against the cash in hand at bank will tell you the cashflow situation at a glance. You don't need the detail on this just the totals. If you than ask the question if I wanted to close the business this month what hit would I take if 25/50/75% of the creditors wouldn't or couldn't pay you'll know the horrible truth. I know it sounds crude but the plain fact is that many one man bands are 'buying' work without realising it and even at low interest rates every day late the subsidy comes off the bottom line.
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I must be lucky. All my clients bar one pay on or before the 30 day mark. Only one has been hard work and they are now on a payment upfront deal which is working fine.

 

I just use excel spreadsheet to track amounts owed and when they are due.

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It looks like one of my local authority clients has found a novel way of regulating its cash-flow. Invoices get to the customer, & are signed off, as normal, but the payments people appear to have a really aggressive spam-filter, that looks for anything containing the word "invoice" & promptly bins it :angry:
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It looks like one of my local authority clients has found a novel way of regulating its cash-flow. Invoices get to the customer, & are signed off, as normal, but the payments people appear to have a really aggressive spam-filter, that looks for anything containing the word "invoice" & promptly bins it :angry:

 

They tend to spam certain word which does involve paying out money. I had notice that the words "invoice" "payment required" "money due" do tend to get binned and doesn't even see the light of day at the recipients end.

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I'm trying to take action against a council- but one is district and one is county, and both are blaming the other, so two months on, I'm getting nowhere. I can't even take them to court because you cannot name two different organisations. They share a building and for GDPR reasons will not even share my case, plus I cannot visit because "The have no customer facing portal" in the buiding, which actually means a reception desk and front door!
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Whatever name/branch is on the invoice; sue that via small claims. A court would agree you’ve taken a reasonable step to claim against the correct body and if it is the wrong branch then they would have to prove that to be the case which would give you a slam dunk claiming against the other body.

 

Plus it’s always the case that once a court summons appears on the desk of the councils in-house legal people a surprising amount of confusion and delay magically vanishes.

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Councils have always been notoriously bad payers but it has worsened greatly since so many of them outsourced their back office work to the likes of Capita. It rook me so long to be paid for a consultancy job with a London authority ten years ago I decided I would never do any council work again. And that was before the staff in general became so demoralised that now they simply don't care.
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the trouble here is that the land concerned has signs up saying things like 'Waveney district Council - no ball games" yet East Suffolk, who are the latest incarnation of Waveney say they don't own it and suffolk county Council do. they refute this, as Wveney have their signs up. Land registry jokingly suggested that if I fenced it off at my expense and nobody complained for a few years, it would become mine - and it's HUGE. I'm after them paying for the paintwork repair on my van when a tree fell on it. So there's no invoice, sadly.

 

I like the idea of inheriting the land though.

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I must be lucky. All my clients bar one pay on or before the 30 day mark. Only one has been hard work and they are now on a payment upfront deal which is working fine.

 

I must be exceptionally lucky. I have a client who pays by return; officially it's 'we'll pay you in xx days where xx is the number of days it took you to invoice us'!

 

So if you don't get around to invoicing them until 30 days after the job they will take 30 days to pay you. But invoice them as soon as the job is finished and the money is in your bank within hours!

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the trouble here is that the land concerned has signs up saying things like 'Waveney district Council - no ball games" yet East Suffolk, who are the latest incarnation of Waveney say they don't own it and suffolk county Council do. they refute this, as Wveney have their signs up. Land registry jokingly suggested that if I fenced it off at my expense and nobody complained for a few years, it would become mine - and it's HUGE. I'm after them paying for the paintwork repair on my van when a tree fell on it. So there's no invoice, sadly.

 

I like the idea of inheriting the land though.

 

Sadly the simplest way to start to investigate this is not available with East Suffolk as they do not have a search documents facility on their website. With councils that do - usually in the Council Democracy section - putting the name of the open space in the search box and simply seeing if it comes up in any meeting papers might be a start. Suffolk County Council does have such a page https://committeemin...uk/Default.aspx but it depends on just how well it works. My very strong suspicion however is that if Waveney put the signs up it was theirs. It could be however that they manage it on behalf of someone else - and that might even be a parish council. If you did make it look as if you were starting to fence it off you can bet the legitimate owner would be there pdq!

Edited by Junior8
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the trouble here is that the land concerned has signs up saying things like 'Waveney district Council - no ball games" yet East Suffolk, who are the latest incarnation of Waveney say they don't own it and suffolk county Council do. they refute this, as Wveney have their signs up. Land registry jokingly suggested that if I fenced it off at my expense and nobody complained for a few years, it would become mine - and it's HUGE. I'm after them paying for the paintwork repair on my van when a tree fell on it. So there's no invoice, sadly.

 

I like the idea of inheriting the land though.

 

 

The issue with councils merging or passing the buck is that they don't want things to affect their funding as their paycheque will be lower than normal. As Waveney is the district council then the onus will be onto them for any damage as it will come under the remit as a district council. County councils are normally responsible for the education, transport, libraries etc. There can sometimes be a lower tier council.

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The problem in Lowestoft is a bit more complex than a simple merger or name change. Prior to the district council merging and becoming East Suffolk council, they created a town council and passed some of their assets on to them. It might be the case that the town council are now responsible for the land in question, but haven't got around to replacing the signage.
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