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Wordsmith

I've had a bit of a blow today. Emailed a client's accounts department to find out where my payment is (it was due a couple of days ago, and I know from experience this company draws it out as long as they can) and they emailed back to say they never received the invoices! I have sent them again and asked them to pay immediately - I do so hope they don't start with today being the first day of their 30-day payment period. I will get seriously into stamp-foot mode if they do.

Now have to sit up all night (or at least for as long as I can stay awake) to finish another job (fortunately not for the same company).

However, a friend did just call by to drop in a Galaxy ice-cream. Mmmmm.

ally_bally_3

Well done NZmegs on the interviews - just to echo what everyone else says on here but I would also go for the other interviews - the more you find out the more likely you are to be able to make an informed decision.

Wordsmith - I get so frustrated with clients who 'lose' invoices - I swear its just an excuse!

Horace

Hi all

Megs - go for the interviews and when you get offered a job, wave that in front of the boss and use is at leverage to get more money.

The day went well but I must say it was totally disorganised and we were shepherded everywhere:rolleyes: They had this thing about waiting for people who hadnt turned up (they didnt turn up at all btw) which threw the whole day out of kilter. We had to sign up for various activities but we had to leave at 2.30pm as my mate had to take her daughter to the dentist so we missed the talk by Philip Serrell.

I may be getting my face in Worcestershire Life Magazine too as there was a photographer there asking people to pose (or rather he asked me and my mate to pose with a chap from Hillscourt Education Centre - I don't recall seeing him asking others to pose). Again, its a bit of free publicity. I received two invitations to lunch:j - one pub (also a posh hotel) gave us an insulated mug each, then we had to try and blag a bag to carry them in (why they didnt give them out at the start I have no idea). I opted for a manicure and my chum had a massage (seated and clothed), then we played Texas Hold'em Poker which was great fun as after one game I won a huge amount of chips but then lost them all in another game.

We had lunch which was jolly nice and we were given some free raffle tickets - my mate won a night for 2 in a 4star hotel (DB&B) and muggins here got nowt:rolleyes: but then I managed to blag a lunch at the same hotel..ha ha ha.

At the end we were given a goody bag - its awfully posh, it was a cooler bag (I had the red one with white spots whilst my chum had the blue one with red strawberries on it) inside each bag was the following: half a pound of fresh sausages, a packet of biscuits, one cube of chocolate, a 2 for the price of 1 entry into Ragley Hall, various discount vouchers that probably won't get used, a heavy Worcester Warriors keyring in a box, a golf ball, a trolley token, a book about Elgar's Birthplace, a conference book about Worcestershire, a ruler with built in calculator, a model car, a bottle of salad dressing and another insulated mug:cool:

I met loads of contacts and now have ideas for events for both conferences and weddings - The Worcester Porcelain Museum runs tile and plate painting courses and one of the painters from Royal Worcester teaches people how do do things. Tiles etc, are fired and the purply paint changes to bright blue.

I entered a competition to win a day out at some high ropes thing but I hate heights so would pass this onto a charity to use as a raffle prize.

On the whole the day was jolly nice but its a pity that we didnt get to see the afternoon speaker or participate in the networking event with champagne and cake or the laser clay pigeon shoot or the virtual golf:rolleyes:

sunshine_girl_2

Well done nzmegs on getting two interviews - it often goes that way, a well-deserved promotion in the pipeline and then two more opportunities come up! For what it's worth, I would say definitely go for the interviews, you are not committing yourself to anything by going but you could miss out on something if you dont. Good luck with whatever you decide.

Horace

Hi all - hope you are all ok?

I have been to the printers today to collect my leaflets which look fab, then I did a mystery shop immediately afterwards

Just had a really strange call from a pushy advertising woman - talk about gabble:rolleyes: She was trying to push me to have a quarter page ad in a rag called The West Midlands News Wedding Guide 2009. Talk about pushy she wanted me to give her my card details so that she could place the ad so I asked her to email me some details so I got the response "I dont have time for that" well, I admit that I lied about the cost of my quarter page ad in the magazine that I have just advertised in and I told her that it cost me £50 so she immediately claimed she could do the ad for £40. Again I asked her for details of the newspaper but she refused and I said that rather than give her my card details I wanted to know more before I committed myself at which point she put the phone down - now I will never advertise with them if that's their attitude.

Might be getting some business via that thing I was at yesterday because one of the venues (a university setting) was telling me that people who book with them often want help so I said that I would do anything and would be willing to help people (it goes without saying that they would have to pay).

I am trying to sort out a new designer for my webpage - I want to be able to change the pages myself and then I can sort out the meta tags with google adwords.

Have fun all.

Wordsmith

Stayed up till 3 a.m. trying to get a job finished. Needed to do an all-nighter really, but ran out of steam. Got as much done as I needed to to send it off this morning. Have been a shop girl this afternoon and now back for the evening shift to get the rest of the job done. Apart from necessary farmily-related things I haven't had a day off since Christmas and I am beginning to feel a bit weary from it all.

Company that claimed never to have received my invoices checked with the person who I sent them to, who confirmed that he did receive them but apparently did not pass them on to accounts. Why? Anyway, was told that they would be paid next week (not good enough, they were dated and sent 27 April) but they can't say which day as the MD is away - it's a fair-sized business so why everything has to stop while the big boss is away is beyond me. The accounts person's email was slightly telling me off, too, saying I should send invoices direct to the accounts department and not via the person who gave me the work. Well, excuse me, I have been working for them reasonably regularly for a year and a half and I have always, without comment, sent the invoices to the person who gave me the work. Seems sensible - surely they have to approve payment, otherwise I could vastly inflate the invoice. So, tired, broke and told off today. However, did find that lovely friend had put a ginormous piece of chocolate cake on my computer to find when I came in this evening, which he'd bought from the farmers' market - and I hadn't even mentioned my woes to him. So, lovely friends and chocolate cake have come through again to make the day bearable.

Horace

Chocolate cake fixes everything:D

As for the Accounts Dept scolding you - its not your fault and perhaps they should include instructions on every order that is sent out by them that all invoices should be submitted to them and not the person issuing the order. Its an error on their part and not yours. Nice to companies using that old excuse "the boss is away and we can't pay anybody" what that means is that the boss is here but he is unable to sign off a cheque due to insufficient funds either that or he is waiting for the interest to hit the account before he sends off the cheque.:rolleyes:

Hope you manage to finish your writing - I will have to disappear in a minute as I need to go to bed, its an early start tomorrow as I am off to help out at a local carnival and I am being collected at 9am:eek: I am not looking forward to it because it is supposed to rain tomorrow:rolleyes:

Ciao
Horace

PS. I was given an insight to the newspaper folks over on the vent board and I was right to steer clear of them because they are well dodgy.

tyllwyd

Wordsmith wrote: »

...The accounts person's email was slightly telling me off, too, saying I should send invoices direct to the accounts department and not via the person who gave me the work. Well, excuse me, I have been working for them reasonably regularly for a year and a half and I have always, without comment, sent the invoices to the person who gave me the work. Seems sensible - surely they have to approve payment, otherwise I could vastly inflate the invoice. ...

The contact at the company who gave you the work should have told you where to send your invoice, because all the companies I work for have slightly different procedures. I'd say that most companies ask for the invoice to go to the accounts department so that it can be logged on their system & they then send it on to the in-house editor for approval before payment. That's no excuse for the editor just sitting with unpaid invoices in their in-tray though.

My favourite company to work for pay me by BACS the week after I email my invoice to them. My least-favourite pay me by cheque which they print in the cheque run at the end of the month following the month in which my invoice is dated (so if my invoice is dated 1 June, they'd do the cheque at the end of July and post it out to me).

Wordsmith

Hi, Tyllwyd. I think that nearly everyone I have worked for has expected the invoice to be sent via the person who ordered the work ... or at least they've not told me not to send it to them. For this particular company, I have sent 19 invoices to the manager and have never been asked to do anything different. Even when I have chased up the accounts department in the past (on more than one occasion) they haven't before told me to send the invoice direct to them. Their excuses for late payment varies, though. Once it was that they were changing bank accounts, another time it was that the person who writes the cheques was on holiday for two weeks (eh?) ... Probably the mangager just forgot to pass my two invoices on to the accounts department. It would be nice if he at least apologised. It would be nicer if they paid me. Maybe this week ... It could, of course, all be an excuse for stringing out the payment time. Oh, shame on me - how could I think such a thing!

I've also worked for a company that paid by cheque at the end of the month following the month in which the invoice was sent. I did once do a job for someone who paid me before I even sent the invoice - now that's what I call a good payer!

Mudbath

All this invoicing seems to be a nightmare. I'm lucky that clients pay me as they have treatments so the only wait I have is if they pay by cheque and I have to wait for it to clear. Talking of money....guess i'd better go and do some accounts and pay for a course I need to do in September.

Hope you all have a lovely day xx