I worked for university accounting many, many years ago. We paid late. Ninety day terms and then maybe we'd forget to pay your invoice for a whole month, oops.
And for little one man engineering outfits supplying the science department I was working in this was life-or-death stuff, because you know they've bought those materials on credit, they've done all the work, and then you haven't even the decency to pay on time. They'd phone up, so desperate for their money and I felt really bad for them saying I can't make it happen, some guy I've never met controls actually paying them.
But for a huge chain store, they don't put up with any of that nonsense. Our department as well as all this sophisticated hand-made one-off stuff had bought a dish washer for some project, ordinary dish washer from a famous high street store. The university didn't pay them on time. So they immediately sent a bill for the cost of sending an overdue letter, plus interest.
We paid that.
So that's the lesson to all those little engineering firms, if you have the balls to do it. Just send "Payment overdue" notices with a new additional invoice and that'll go in the same "Paid eventually but not on time" pile and it'll get paid. You won't get paid faster, but maybe the extra money helps take the sting off a bit.
I worked for university accounting many, many years ago. We paid late. Ninety day terms and then maybe we'd forget to pay your invoice for a whole month, oops.
And for little one man engineering outfits supplying the science department I was working in this was life-or-death stuff, because you know they've bought those materials on credit, they've done all the work, and then you haven't even the decency to pay on time. They'd phone up, so desperate for their money and I felt really bad for them saying I can't make it happen, some guy I've never met controls actually paying them.
But for a huge chain store, they don't put up with any of that nonsense. Our department as well as all this sophisticated hand-made one-off stuff had bought a dish washer for some project, ordinary dish washer from a famous high street store. The university didn't pay them on time. So they immediately sent a bill for the cost of sending an overdue letter, plus interest.
We paid that.
So that's the lesson to all those little engineering firms, if you have the balls to do it. Just send "Payment overdue" notices with a new additional invoice and that'll go in the same "Paid eventually but not on time" pile and it'll get paid. You won't get paid faster, but maybe the extra money helps take the sting off a bit.