How many years later can one request payment on an unpaid invoice??
Vladimír Hoffman Slovakia Local time: 10:25 Member (2009) Slovak to English + ...
Feb 22
[Edited at 2012-02-22 10:19 GMT]
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Vladimír Hoffman Slovakia Local time: 10:25 Member (2009) Slovak to English + ...
OMG!
Feb 22
You have so profitable business that you failed to notice missing USD 3000? Frankly, I envy you.
A small piece of advice - You do not need complicated software for managing your records.
A simple Excel sheet does the job very well.
Client's name, Job name, Job code (if assigned), Unit (words, pages, characters), Scope, Currency, Price per unit, Total price in foreign currency, Total price in your currency, Job order no., Job state (completed, under way, invoiced, paid up), Date of completion, Invoice number, Payment date. That's all.
I use it for recording, invoicing, statistics, monitoring of payments and many other purposes. Once a job is received I fill in basic data and then update fields after completion of job, preparation of invoice and payment of due amount.
If you want, e-mail me and I will prepare the table for you, it is really simple.
Frederic Lecocq & Zofia Wyszynski wrote:
Dear colleagues,
Thank you all for your replies. I think I will start out by doing as you suggested, Phil and Bin, and try to have faith in mankind. It was not a small assignment; if it were, I would not bother posting or trying to send a reminder. I would be too ashamed of my poor accounting and invoice tracking skills!!
It was for over $3,000. The country of the client is Norway, and the client is the Bank of Norway. So, I would think they would honor my request, but, then again, they may be very on top of the legal aspects in terms of the statute of limitations, and have very strict guidelines to follow when it comes to things like this. But it's great to have the opinions of other colleagues on what you would do in a situation like this.
I am very curious to look into TO3000 - I've not heard of this before.
If anyone else has a good system for tracking assignments and invoices, I'd love to hear about it, because although this case is extreme, it's not the first time it's happened to me. I wish I could say I'm wealthy enough to work pro bono, but this really isn't the case!
Thanks again!
Zofia
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Vladimír Hoffman Slovakia Local time: 10:25 Member (2009) Slovak to English + ...
I have just noticed that you had sent
Feb 22
invoice for the job. The task is then even simplier - Excel sheet with numbers of invoices, due date and state of invoice (paid, unpaid, delayed). Simple equations (but you DO NOT need them) will provide you with additional features, such as amount of delayed payments, amount of expected payments etc. You only need to keep the table updated (which means that once a month or even once a qurter you should check your bank account statements and compare them with the table.
I even heard about colleague who keeps his records on paper. Although it seems a bit strange to me, with no more less than 100-200 invoices per year it could be manageable.
Vladimír Hoffman wrote:
You have so profitable business that you failed to notice missing USD 3000? Frankly, I envy you.
A small piece of advice - You do not need complicated software for managing your records.
A simple Excel sheet does the job very well.
Client's name, Job name, Job code (if assigned), Unit (words, pages, characters), Scope, Currency, Price per unit, Total price in foreign currency, Total price in your currency, Job order no., Job state (completed, under way, invoiced, paid up), Date of completion, Invoice number, Payment date. That's all.
I use it for recording, invoicing, statistics, monitoring of payments and many other purposes. Once a job is received I fill in basic data and then update fields after completion of job, preparation of invoice and payment of due amount.
If you want, e-mail me and I will prepare the table for you, it is really simple.
Frederic Lecocq & Zofia Wyszynski wrote:
Dear colleagues,
Thank you all for your replies. I think I will start out by doing as you suggested, Phil and Bin, and try to have faith in mankind. It was not a small assignment; if it were, I would not bother posting or trying to send a reminder. I would be too ashamed of my poor accounting and invoice tracking skills!!
It was for over $3,000. The country of the client is Norway, and the client is the Bank of Norway. So, I would think they would honor my request, but, then again, they may be very on top of the legal aspects in terms of the statute of limitations, and have very strict guidelines to follow when it comes to things like this. But it's great to have the opinions of other colleagues on what you would do in a situation like this.
I am very curious to look into TO3000 - I've not heard of this before.
If anyone else has a good system for tracking assignments and invoices, I'd love to hear about it, because although this case is extreme, it's not the first time it's happened to me. I wish I could say I'm wealthy enough to work pro bono, but this really isn't the case!
Thanks again!
Zofia
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Neil Coffey United Kingdom Local time: 09:25 Member (2009) French to English + ...
Ethics...
Feb 22
Jan Willem van Dormolen wrote:
This should teach you a lesson: make sure you pay attention to your payments. You didn't - and that's your fault. I find it a tad unethical to go after your money after such a long time. Several years! To me, that's not really acceptable, even IF the client should have paid you without encouragement.
True, but on the other hand the client was also sitting there thinking "hee hee, they haven't noticed I haven't paid them for that job". In the battle of ethics, it's arguable which is the more reprehensible.
If I was the client, I would pay out of pure professionalism. However, given the length of time, unless I was a large company for who $3K was little more than the daily sandwich bill, I would probably ask for some favourable terms so that it didn't dent the monthly cash flow too much.
If I was the boss, I would also possibly be having a quick word with the accounts department.
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Jan Willem van Dormolen wrote:
This should teach you a lesson: make sure you pay attention to your payments. You didn't - and that's your fault. I find it a tad unethical to go after your money after such a long time. Several years! To me, that's not really acceptable, even IF the client should have paid you without encouragement.
True, but on the other hand the client was also sitting there thinking "hee hee, they haven't noticed I haven't paid them for that job". In the battle of ethics, it's arguable which is the more reprehensible.
However, it might be that the client was just as sloppy as the OP and simply forgot. That happens. Not all agencies are out to cheat us.
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Rolf Keller Germany Local time: 10:25 English to German
'Actually delivered' list
Feb 23
Emma Goldsmith wrote:
So now I am very methodical and don't start a job until I've entered it in TO3000.
It IS possible to forget that.
But under all circumstances you'll deliver your work to your customer - otherwise he/she will call you. So, provided you never ever deliver something via a different method than e-mail, you can use an 'Actually delivered' list.
I use such a list and a mail template for deliveries. Outlook puts all such mails in a separate folder, so I'll never forget to charge any customer.
With invoices it works similarly. Copies of them sleep in a scratch folder until the money is received.
So, I don't need a special software (with updates, faults, possible data losses ...).
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Vladimír Hoffman Slovakia Local time: 10:25 Member (2009) Slovak to English + ...
As Zofia wrote, the client is the Bank of Norway
Feb 23
It is shame, but in big organization sometines really happens that an invoice is lost somewhere on its way from one department to another (not to be confused with "we lost your invoice, could you please send a copy" used by some agencies at overdue payments)
Jan Willem van Dormolen wrote:
Neil Coffey wrote:
Jan Willem van Dormolen wrote:
This should teach you a lesson: make sure you pay attention to your payments. You didn't - and that's your fault. I find it a tad unethical to go after your money after such a long time. Several years! To me, that's not really acceptable, even IF the client should have paid you without encouragement.
True, but on the other hand the client was also sitting there thinking "hee hee, they haven't noticed I haven't paid them for that job". In the battle of ethics, it's arguable which is the more reprehensible.
However, it might be that the client was just as sloppy as the OP and simply forgot. That happens. Not all agencies are out to cheat us.
Subject:
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The contents of this post will automatically be included in the ticket generated. Please add any additional comments or explanation (optional)
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