Businesses scrutinising every penny on invoices received – will this be the trend?

Businesses are quite rightly querying every pound and penny when receiving invoices from other providers for work done. Will this create a difficult time for service providers being required to document and record every minute, half hour spent on services/work provided, keeping rigid and strict records?

Taken from Bytestart.co.uk – The Small Business Portel - research released by Bibby Financial Services, shows that 2.38 million (53%) of UK business owners or managers are stalling payments to other parties in a bid to bridge the late payment gap. With 12 per cent of these businesses spending three days or more per month to recover payments, the potential cost to the economy is huge. Late payments could be causing a ripple effect on over half the businesses in the UK, according to new figures. The total cost of delayed settlement could be costing them up to £2bn per year. Research reveals 52% of UK business owners are spending more time this year chasing late payments than last year, costing vital time and money at a crucial stage for the UK economy.

Recent experience with a client taught us an extremely valuable lesson never to take people/businesses for granted. Always, always keep a good record of work produced with a breakdown of time spent, description of task and cost allocated ready to be invoiced.

If you can show a detailed accurate account of your time taken to complete a piece of work, does the client still have a right to refuse to pay? This is a question which needs to be addressed as this creates a continuous backwards and forwards never ending late payment chasing process which leads to unnecessary stress and time wasting.

Do not under any circumstance become complacent about receiving payments from clients/customers if they go over the agreed payment terms. Why should the money be allowed to sit in their bank making interest when it should be sat in yours? Even a long term client can hit money problems whereby they’re unable to pay their next invoice, even though previous to this time period issues around finance has never risen.

Gut instinct is there for a reason so use it! Should you have any suspicion or reason to think that a client might be facing financial problems then send them a brief run down on the number of hour’s work you’ve done so far. This will give them ample opportunity to speak up and say whether they require any more work to continue as normal or the option to pull back and say no.

A good working practice to adopt when taking on a new client is to provide only 2 hours support at the very beginning. This allows the client to see your work and what can be achieved in that time scale, plus, gives you confirmation that the client can pay when invoiced after those first 2 hours of work within your agreed payment terms.

Building good working relationships with clients is always an important part of running a business, getting paid is massively essential as to whether your continue to trade.

Why women and agency staff will be hit the hardest in Yorkshire and should consider an alternative option

Taken from the Yorkshire Post Newspaper on Saturday May 15, Jack Blanchard reported on a study showing that nearly three quarters of all public sector workers are women.

High numbers of these workers come from teaching, healthcare and most crucially administration. It is strongly believed that these back office staff along with agency workers will take the severest of cuts.

Although a lot of these jobs are part time, the fact is that an amount of 15 hours can be vital to a family relying on this important income.

It stated that more than 80% of all new jobs created for women between 1998 and 2007 were in state or public sector reliant areas.

Our mammoth task is to push the private and public sector into embracing the fast growing Virtual Assistance Industry which needs to be strongly addressed and promoted UK wide. The benefits vastly outweigh any negatives and help businesses and local councils save money, while providing self employment to those people who wish to work from home using their existing professional administration skills.

Volcanic Ash Creates Problems for Businesses

People caught out by the volcanic eruption bringing airports UK wide to a standstill caused immense problems for businesses in April 2010.

Unable to get back home from holidays and business journeys brings home the necessary need to rethink how you operate your business communication, allowing your business to continue automatically without any hiccups or mishaps.

Not everyone has a Blackberry or iPhone or access to a laptop at the drop of a hat, so unexpected weather conditions like the heavy snow fall of January this year ground a large part of the country to a standstill, causing a significant financial impact on businesses and those people who could not travel into work.

You need to ‘think on your feet’ and be able to react in any situation, having a Virtual Assistant on tap who generally works from their own home office where weather conditions don’t affect their work or communication is an absolute must.

Having the option to pass any urgent messages, jobs to be done, responsibility to a Virtual Assistant is a huge weight off any business owner/manager’s mind.

So consider the positive impact of working with a Virtual Assistant and let us take the brunt of your worries and make your life a lot less hassled and a lot more organised.