I have been doing some work for a huge company. They are one of the largest 50 or so companies in the world I would guess. Them having money and ability to pay is zero concern. Especially the small amounts for the work I do for them relative to the other irons they have in the fire.
Normally I work for mom and pop type places. I either email them an invoice or they just pay me in person when I am done. The amount of red tape I deal with on this big company is mind boggling. Now that I am finally set up in their system they tell me that invoices are paid in 30 days. That is good and fine by me.
The problem I am having is this 30 days doesn't start until my invoice is "approved" Once approved exactly 30 days from that the money gets direct deposited to my account like clockwork. The issue is getting approved. I can do some work and submit and invoice and then it gets hung up in their accounts payable system because the project I was working on didn't have a code activated in their system yet, or the account it was supposed to be billed to didn't have enough funds allocated, or some other minor detail was wrong. It seems every time it is something. Last go round it took nearly thirty days getting my invoice approved.
The guy I deal directly with on the work is great. He tries to help me however he can but even he gets swamped with the red tape. You can't call the accounts payable people and speak to the same person twice.
I would walk away but this company should be providing me about 1 week of work per month and they are paying more than my normal rates. Any tips on dealing with this?
As to a contract we don't even have one. This company is so big they don't sign contracts for any project less than 2 million dollars or something like that.
I have thought of approaching them with the idea of late fees. Basically I want my payment within 45 days of when I submit an invoice or it will cost them a penalty. If payment is delayed because I submitted an invoice improperly that is a different matter but when the delays are due to their internal incompetence that is not my fault.
It sucks that a small company like me is essentially financing a billion dollar company.
Normally I work for mom and pop type places. I either email them an invoice or they just pay me in person when I am done. The amount of red tape I deal with on this big company is mind boggling. Now that I am finally set up in their system they tell me that invoices are paid in 30 days. That is good and fine by me.
The problem I am having is this 30 days doesn't start until my invoice is "approved" Once approved exactly 30 days from that the money gets direct deposited to my account like clockwork. The issue is getting approved. I can do some work and submit and invoice and then it gets hung up in their accounts payable system because the project I was working on didn't have a code activated in their system yet, or the account it was supposed to be billed to didn't have enough funds allocated, or some other minor detail was wrong. It seems every time it is something. Last go round it took nearly thirty days getting my invoice approved.
The guy I deal directly with on the work is great. He tries to help me however he can but even he gets swamped with the red tape. You can't call the accounts payable people and speak to the same person twice.
I would walk away but this company should be providing me about 1 week of work per month and they are paying more than my normal rates. Any tips on dealing with this?
As to a contract we don't even have one. This company is so big they don't sign contracts for any project less than 2 million dollars or something like that.
I have thought of approaching them with the idea of late fees. Basically I want my payment within 45 days of when I submit an invoice or it will cost them a penalty. If payment is delayed because I submitted an invoice improperly that is a different matter but when the delays are due to their internal incompetence that is not my fault.
It sucks that a small company like me is essentially financing a billion dollar company.