I had a disturbing call with the "accounts payable" team of one of my clients today.  It seems that an invoice that we sent to the client has gone missing.  The work was approved and completed, and a purchase order was opened, but it seems no one bother to check on the status of the invoice from our side until recently.  What struck me about this is that after calling the client's AP team, they have a record of the purchase order, they know we completed the work for them, and they claim not to have received an invoice, even though the address on our invoice matches the address they've requested us to send invoices to.  Now, we are at fault for not following up more quickly on our outstanding invoice in this case, but does the client have a policy of leaving open purchase orders which haven't been invoiced alone for long periods of time?  Did they think we wouldn't notice that we had not been paid? Why wouldn't the better part of valor on their part be to request an invoice from us if it had not been received?

This is another topic of frustration for me.  The team we worked with likes our work and is happy with it, but the accounting team may as well be in Siberia for all the impact our counterparts have to help us.  There's little to no accountability in many firms when a purchase is created and when an invoice is presented and should be paid.  Often the people who engage a consultant have little understanding and no relationships or influence with the people who have to approve the "vendor" and eventually, hopefully, cut the check.

I think in many cases this is unintentional, since consultants aren't hired on a regular basis and most purchasing systems don't know how to handle these service oriented, one time agreements without creating a vendor and all the other overhead.  So, one or two invoices go missing and no one is really motivated to find out what happened.

This is an error of omission, but unlike in life, this error won't stand as long as someone believes they are owed money and will attempt to collect.  What I can't understand is that if there is a fiduciary responsibility to a "Vendor" (in this case us) and an outstanding liability that's recognized, why someone within the AP team, or some software in the financial system doesn't identify open purchase orders that have not received invoices.   After all, more than likely someone is going to show up and want their money - why not work to reconcile the books on a timely fashion? 

I want to do business with people I can trust, and who expect to pay on time for good services rendered effectively and courteously.  I want to be able to bill someone, not a mail box or PO box, but a person and have that person take responsibility for our relationship, not shuffle it off to people who are uninvolved and uninterested, and frankly compensated on minimizing outgoing cash flow.  This is a problem in many organizations, and one that frankly has little sympathy within the finance departments, since larger organizations can place the blame on the "bureaucracy" and don't have to worry about smaller consulting firms putting up a big argument, since they don't want to anger an important client. 

When the shoe is on the other foot, I'm sure many of these firms have very strict collection policies and expect their money to be paid on time, or else.  What does it say about a firm that treats it's customers in one regard, and its "vendors" much differently?