Agency looking doomed....

[Sausage Surprise]

Word is from the client that my current agency may be having some "cashflow" problems. There are 5 of us here working through said agency, who pay monthly i.e. invoice at end of 4 weeks and payment received for 4 weeks the following week.


Anyone come across this before? How can you get out of this without breaching some handcuff clause?


I don't fancy losing 5 weeks money so how can any agency demise be pre-empted?

[DaveB]

Word is from the client that my current agency may be having some "cashflow" problems. There are 5 of us here working through said agency, who pay monthly i.e. invoice at end of 4 weeks and payment received for 4 weeks the following week.


Anyone come across this before? How can you get out of this without breaching some handcuff clause?


I don't fancy losing 5 weeks money so how can any agency demise be pre-empted?

If it's really imminent and you can handle the intrrruption in cash flow then the best way to deal with it is to retain signed timesheets, but not submit invoices for them. Once current agency goes under you can sign up with a new one, and submit invoices against those timesheets with cooperation from Client Co. if needed.

This does assume Client Co. will cooperate to smooth things over, as it may mean they get a big bill up front from the new agency to cover the outstanding timesheets.

Of course the very fact that 5 of you stop submitting invoices will mean that the agency can't invoice client co. and that could precipitate them going under when they may have survived.

[northernladuk]

Doesn't IPSE cover some losses if your agency goes bump?

[MicrosoftBob]

Doesn't IPSE cover some losses if your agency goes bump?

For IPSE Plus membership it's upto £10000 compensation for failed payments, or upto £1000 if the agency breaks its contract

[uk contractor]

Word is from the client that my current agency may be having some "cashflow" problems. There are 5 of us here working through said agency, who pay monthly i.e. invoice at end of 4 weeks and payment received for 4 weeks the following week.


Anyone come across this before? How can you get out of this without breaching some handcuff clause?


I don't fancy losing 5 weeks money so how can any agency demise be pre-empted?

All 5 of you need to speak to the agency ASAP together as one & tell them unless they can guarantee the salary you will be forced to speak to the client co & explain they need to stop paying the agency as it will not reach the 5 contractors who will then have to either walk off site & find something else or stay on as unpaid & find something else. Lose lose all round but thats the reality of it no way to sugarcoat this.

If the end client pays the oustanding invoices in full its dead money if the agency is going bust anyway they will be in deep financial trouble probably for months now forget what contracts say as the agency creditors will ignore those you will be lucky to get anything if they go under. Ask the end client co if they would pay your salaries direct to your accountants & just pay the agency their fee I am not going to say why but you can use your imagination on this one

That might sound ruthless but I have worked with several contractors who have lost 3 months salary when their different agencies went bust & they were too slow to raise their invoices monthly. If the agency goes under you will receive virtually nothing no-one is going to take their debts over.

This is yet another reason why contractors IMO earn every penny they have to take massive risks working through little agencies who come & go like the buses!

[garethevans1986]

Did any of you do a credit check on the agency before starting the contract?

I did on my current one and found they had a very poor credit rating "cash transactions only" which was quite interesting.

GE

[psychocandy]

Join IPSE sharpish like

[DaveB]

For IPSE Plus membership it's upto £10000 compensation for failed payments, or upto £1000 if the agency breaks its contract

But only after you have tried to claim the money yourself.

All reasonable attempts must be made to pursue the debt and seek reimbursement from the Agency and any claim must take into account amounts recovered from the administrators or the courts.

So don't expect to ring them up and get a payout the next day.

It also depends how many other IPSE memebers are working through that agency as their is an aggreagte limit of £150,000 for any one agency failure. If there are 50 members with that agency, you get £3000 each. And if the limit has already been reached when you try and claim, you get nothing.

[DaveB]

Join IPSE sharpish like

There is a 60 waiting period between joining and being able to make a claim, so if they really are going under joining now is probably too late.

[Project Monkey]

Word is from the client that my current agency may be having some "cashflow" problems. There are 5 of us here working through said agency, who pay monthly i.e. invoice at end of 4 weeks and payment received for 4 weeks the following week.


Anyone come across this before? How can you get out of this without breaching some handcuff clause?


I don't fancy losing 5 weeks money so how can any agency demise be pre-empted?

If the agency doesn't pay then they are in breach, the contract is broken and you can ignore the handcuff clause.

Don't see how you could avoid this just on hearsay though.