May 242013
 

The Boss is freaking out about money. I can understand why; he’s sunk a lot of money into New Company, and he also has a fairly expensive hobby (buying and restoring old cars).

He has assigned me a top-priority project to get our customers to pay more quickly. And there are things I can do in that vein; I’ve been signing us up to receive payments by electronic bank transfer with anyone who offers it, and I’m working on getting us set up to accept payments via Web so I can e-mail invoices and have customers (hopefully) just click a link and pay.

But what Boss wants is to get them to pay within five days of receiving the invoice, ten at most. And I just don’t think that’s going to be terribly feasible. Companies pay their bills according to their own cash flow and payment processing schedule, and it usually takes a couple of weeks at least. I’m sure we can get a little better turnaround for some of the big customers that take over a month to pay us, but I’m skeptical of our ability to get it down to less than a week.

Still, we’ll see how it goes.

In other news, I applied for a job last night. I’m not actively looking for a job, but one cropped up in my LinkedIn feed that’s essentially the same job I’m doing now, with a comparable rate of pay but excellent benefits. I would really, really like to have health benefits.

I doubt I’ll hear from them—I didn’t spend any time customizing my resume with keywords specific to the particular job, I just made sure the info was up-to-date and sent it off. But it’s about time to get back into practice with job-hunting. I’ve been working here for a couple of years now, which is enough experience that I can reasonably start looking for something with more room to grow.

 Posted by at 6:39 am

  3 Responses to “TGIF”

  1. Bertha, not sure what kind of business you’re with. But I was was accounting for a service company back in the day, I was issued the same challenge, and dropped my receivables to practically zero with the idea of offering the service/sales staff 1% of the cash they could collect on the spot. Of course, interest rates are lower now, so the cost of money is less for the receivables than it was then, so 1% might not make sense now. But sales people are greedy, and service people are poor – any carrot is better than what they’re getting now.

    I got the idea from a “Women In Business” luncheon I had attended just a few weeks prior, so I guess my unsolicited advice is, perhaps, twofold.

    Also, if you have a CPA that you’re working with, pick up the phone and ask their advice.

    • Great minds think alike–that was my first suggestion, too. But the boss immediately nixed the idea. I understand he’s worried about money, but I feel like he’s shooting himself in the foot if his priority is a quick turnaround.

      Unfortunately the boss is a CPA, so I can’t really go to another one…

    • Rather, we don’t have sales staff that can collect on the spot, but I suggested we offer a 1% discount for customers who paid within a week. But the boss didn’t care for the idea at all.

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