Tracing receivable bank transfers

saajan_12

Hi, 
Looking for some direction in how to trace or follow up on a payment I'm expecting to receive but isn't credited on my bank statement (or at least what questions to ask). 

Background: 
I do ad hoc contract work for a company, and get paid expenses as separate payments per assignment, but everything done in a week is paid on the same day. The payments show up as 'direct credit' on my bank statement. I found I'm missing 1 such payment, but the other assignments that week were paid on the day I was expecting this one. There's also been no issues with other assignments before and after the missing one. 

Actions so far:
I asked the company, who said their finance dept records show all payments made without issue, and list everything in that month including the one I'm missing. 
I asked my bank (TSB), who confirmed the other amounts received but say they don't see anything from the same sender in the amount I'm expecting. They say they cant trace the absence of a payment as they have nothing to go on, and would need the sender to trace their end.
The company keep referring me to my bank saying their records show it as paid. 

Question:
- Any idea on next steps - is there a particular reference / confirmation I can request from the sender to help trace the payment?
- If the company refuse to help further, then is there anything I can do through my bank? 
- Is there any recourse if its my records against theirs on whether the amount was paid? Of course don't want it to get legal, not least because I enjoy doing ongoing jobs for them but is there any other option? Feels like in this century it should be easier to trace definitively whether a payment was actually made. 

Thanks in advance

DullGreyGuy

There will be IDs for the transaction that their bank can give, and potentially routing information, that their bank can give to them to pass to you to pass to your bank and between them the two banks should be able to find where the funds have gone.  I cant remember the industry names for these off hand but if you want to get technical ask your bank exactly what info would help them. 

Presumably you have checked the obvious like account number and sortcode 

Your bank alone will have limited options outside of checking their suspense accounts or such to ensure it didnt go there but those are used a lot less these days than they used to. 

BACS/FasterPay payments from UK to UK should be straight forward but with the sheer volume of data being processed there is always some room for errors. When you get more complex like SWIFT or international payments then it gets much more complex. In all cases even some large banks use intermediaries which means there are more bounces along the way.