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You know after receiving, for the umpteenth month on the trot, a partial payment from a work provider it set me thinking a bit.
Do they think we work for free?
Do they think that the VAT or Tax man will accept a partial payment?
Will my engineers accept 75{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or less of their wages this month?
Will my spares supplier accept reduced payments?
Does my bank manager understand this?
One answer to all the above questions is a simple “no”, so why should I accept a partial payment? It’s not my fault that the person running the operation cannot manage their finances properly, not is it my fault if they are having financial difficulties and yet, it appears that I, as a sub-contracted employee am expected to help to finance someone else’s business using *MY* money!
Not only that but it causes a cashflow nightmare when it happens and it seems to be happening more and more often and, in some cases, the payments are going down and down month on month. But try explaining to the engineers why they can’t get a new test meter, or a wage increase.
Wage increases, there’s a good one! How often in the past three or four years have you had an increase in rates from most of the work providers? Not often I’ll wager.
And yet costs rise, not just year on year, but even month on month with wages (the major killer), fuel, phone charges, IT costs you name it, we’re just expected to “absorb” all these costs. However, to add insult to injury, we don’t even get paid in full now as well!
I would dearly love for one of these firms to send a memo to their own internal staff saying that they could only afford to pay them 60{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} or so of their wages this month and see what reaction they got. I do believe that it would not be very pleasant, yet we just seem to put up with it for some obscure reason.
K.
Late payment
The real answer is to withdraw your services and find some who will work with your business and not against.
It won’t be an easy task…but if one company can put the squeeze on because of late payment think what will happen when they cant pay at all.
Be wise …….leave the sinking ship whilst you can….
regards Kevin
Is this not a crafty way to bring in late payments again by another method. Should you resort to litigation you will be the one at fault for accepting the partial payment. Do you refuse partial pament ? (as we all tend to think that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush)
I wonder how you stand in law, are you entitled to interst on the unpaid part of the payment or none because you accepted it in the first place ?
Might be another suggested topic for the office of fair trade to investigate !
as it is becoming to be more the norm. 🙄Re: Late payment
ted wrote:The real answer is to withdraw your services and find some who will work with your business and not against.
Exactly! Some people treat you like dirt and an idiot and expect you to sit back and just accept it, all I can say is “remember who’s business it is and who pays the bills here!”
ted wrote:It won’t be an easy task…but if one company can put the squeeze on because of late payment think what will happen when they cant pay at all.
Yep a scary thought indeed, but we all need paid as badly as anyone else, more so probably as we’re the guys at the sharp end with the real day to day running costs and issues/problems to solve for other people.
ted wrote:Be wise …….leave the sinking ship whilst you can….
In this case, I’m out already!
K.
Del wrote:Might be another suggested topic for the office of fair trade to investigate ! as it is becoming to be more the norm. 🙄
All they would say is that it is a commercial decision that *you* make to accept that treatment, the simple answer is you either work for them and acept it, or don’t. That’s the choices, take your pick! 😕
Problem is that, bar stopping work either permanently or for a short period until the payments issue is resolved there is little you can do about it.
But it is my experience (and I’ve done this too 🙁 ) that most agents will try at all costs to avoid taking this kind of action for fear of losing the work. As I say, I did as well until I had an epiphany one day….
Why do work for someone that is not paying? Or why do work for people that don’t pay you on time? And why do we all fear taking action over it, if you don’t get paid don’t work!! IF you don’t pay staff, what happens? Yup, they don’t come to work or go and work elsewhere that’s what.
What I realised is that there is no point to it I would far rather cut back the workforce or the area that we cover and become more profitable on a smaller scale than less profitable, with all the ensuing headaches, on a larger scale.
So now I’ve tried this business two ways, on a small scale with a couple of engineers and with over 30 of a staff, needless to say now there are only two engineers that work for the business as it is more profitable with less grief than I have ever had before. Oh and I can sleep at night!
K.
Being multi branded we have to deal with loads of companies, some are good, most average and the odd one rubbish.
Back in May I put one of them on stop, they hadn’t paid since January and some of the outstanding went back to the previous July. I was well aware this action may compromise my relationship them, but I was also aware that my business was being compromised by poor cash flow. I had phone calls from several retailers to see what was going on, and they then left me to fight my battle, which I think was the proper thing to do. It got to the stage where we looked through the workload and cancelled calls that were already one the system.
One day a lass from this manufacturer phoned and asked the status of a call that we had passed back to them. I refused to divulge any information, she got rather agitated at this and said I was likely to jeopardise my realtionship with them, I told her my business was likely to be in jeopardy and this needed sorting, I asked her if she was getting her wages o.k. every month, to which she replied, “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here!” I replied, “I rest my case! When they pay me to date I will reconsider my actions”. Some people will be reading this and know of whom I am referring. I’m not going to name them now, as at last they have got it together and the backlog is less than a month.
I find there are times when you have to take drastic action, I was caught out by P.E.S.N. and there is no way I will let that happen again. I now use a debt collection agency in serious cases and the results are good. I say to everybody, don’t try to be the nice guy, the Staff, Vat & Tax offices still want their cut and when it comes to the crunch, they won’t be so nice.
Alex
Payment
We all work and run business’s for profit.A dirty word…………but is it?
We all need to to take a step back and self analize our own setups to see if we all are doing it right.If you do this correctly you will come to the same conclusions as myself (and a few others) and that is :
I run my business…….its my cash in the bank……….its my cash flow………..I am in control of what my business does.
If I allow a third party to dictate to me what and when they pay me I am conceeding a percentage of control to the third party.The third party needs to increase their control of the business in question and this is the only way they can do it.The only answer is you have to be in the driving seat and with that statement comes the responsibility of running your business(including down sizing to extract yourself from the mess your in) and ensuring you can honestly claim to be in control.
Its a terrible situation to be in and a lot of planning needs to be done to get out of tight situations,but you are not alone.Here in this forum are people who have done what you might like to do,I have been kicked out of Nesn for having a point of view,I been allowed back in because they needed coverage ,I’ve now resigned because they are trying to threaten me with legal action and inpose on me restrictive practice that is illegal under European law.Don’t be fooled………..there is good work out there and many good firms chasing it……..Make yourself available
regards kevin
Alex wrote:One day a lass from this manufacturer phoned and asked the status of a call that we had passed back to them. I refused to divulge any information, she got rather agitated at this and said I was likely to jeopardise my realtionship with them, I told her my business was likely to be in jeopardy and this needed sorting, I asked her if she was getting her wages o.k. every month, to which she replied, “If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here!” I replied, “I rest my case! When they pay me to date I will reconsider my actions”.
Yes I have done the same on a few occasions as we only have two things as leverage to get payment, doing the calls / information from doing those calls and paying for spares and if I put someone on stop for non-payment then I do not offer any reporting back nor will I settle any outstanding spares account in relation to that work. Spending more time administrating the work you’re not being paid for is only compounding the loss, once I get paid I’m more than happy to continue.
Alex wrote:I say to everybody, don’t try to be the nice guy, the Staff, Vat & Tax offices still want their cut and when it comes to the crunch, they won’t be so nice.
Exactly!
K.
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