Reply to: Longest time you have gone without invoicing.

[SimonMac]

It's Friday and I've not submitted an invoice, the cold sweats are taking over!

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

longest delay in sending an invoice - 25 minutes.

[Spartacus]

Invoices? Whats wrong with the old cash in hand? I did a contract at the DHSS many years ago and there was no need for invoices, just send the timesheet in and I used to get a check the next week which was promptly cashed...and spent

You mean you were signing on and then got your giro?

[darmstadt]

Invoices? Whats wrong with the old cash in hand? I did a contract at the DHSS many years ago and there was no need for invoices, just send the timesheet in and I used to get a check the next week which was promptly cashed...and spent

[CoolCat]

I worked with the sales director of one of the big consultancies.

He does his expenses every twelve months.

He just comes in with bin bags full of receipts, calls his PA into the room, and they both spend 2 days turning them into one big expense claim.

Couple of hundred grand in one go.

[IR35 Avoider]

With regard to the OP, I once read of a similar lack of interest in income in a book on what it was like to work in the City. The author had been explaining that some traders held onto their jobs simple to have better information/facilities to help with trading their own money. Someone left a company, and HR in error stopped the salary of a trader with the same name, instead of that of the person who had left. When the error was discovered, the police were called in to investigate, and took some convincing that the trader simply hadn't noticed that his salary hadn't been paid for several months.

[IR35 Avoider]

I was sort of in an opposite situation once. Several months into a contract, in which I had invoiced monthly and been paid promptly by the agency, I started getting client managers and the agency asking me various questions, in an attempt to drum up justification so that the purchase-order for my services could be approved by a higher layer of client management.

The agency were a preferred/sole supplier of many contractors to the multi-national client, so I suppose they just paid me on the assumption that the client would eventually be good for it.

[Safe Collections]

We have a small contractor invoice at the moment that dates to 2009.

Do we win?

[cojak]

Flipping heck that's worse than me!

I have got better though and am pretty dilligent when it come to reconciling income against work after I got bitten when I was a newbie.

[KentPhilip]

This raises the question: Do you know of any contractors who have just not been bothered to raise an invoice at all? Not because they chose to offer their time for free for any reason, but because they couldn't be ar*ed to raise it, ever.

My guess is that it must have happened once or twice, but is rare.

I know that the entertainer Benny Hill was so disorganized that after he died at home they found a number of envelopes at his home containing cheques for his work going back several months - he had just not been bothered to cash them.

[scooterscot]

I get tetchy by the third month.

[MarillionFan]

2 years since I last invoiced.

[Bunk]

So your manager signed off more than 100k for 6 months of your time. I'm in the wrong IT area.

Oh no, sadly 6 months of my time isn't worth 100k. I just meant that they allocate the budget upfront based on purchase orders so the money would be there for the guy. Didn't his agent hassle him or was he direct?

[Scrag Meister]

£100k isn't a huge amount for them though. When I was there, the department manager used to sit with me in a meeting and say "What's your rate again? Ok, 5 times that, times 26. Right, I'll get another purchase order for 6 months signed off.", so they've probably got the cash earmarked for him.

So your manager signed off more than 100k for 6 months of your time. I'm in the wrong IT area.

[TraceRacing]

7 months - he must have some warchest!

but he's a plonker too...