Parasol Umbrella seem to have disappeared today

[pacontracting]

So contacted them again to chase up. Came back with the same 'We are waiting for confirmation from your agency before we make payment' comment they made day before yesterday. My agency had sent a reconfirmation yesterday, which they said 'hadn't arrived' and to 'wait a couple of hours' (not sure why) so when I called them out on the same comment again 'we are waiting for confirmation etc', they admitted they have too many payments to make. Seems they are getting contractors to chase their agency for no reason - just to make them go away.

Not sure how they are prioritising payments, or even if they are still making them, but it's apparent they are not in a good place.

Does anyone know how long Giant were out before they starting clearing the backlog of payments? Did people actually get what they were owed?

[gizzmo]

e-mail received at 18:28 this evening:

Dear xxxxx Further to the communication sent to you on 17th January 2022, we would like to provide another update in respect of the recent incident involving malicious activity on our networks; how it affects you personally and to provide information on progress we have made, as we work towards resuming normal service for all our employees. In summary, we recently became aware of suspicious activity on our network. As soon as we identified the issue, we immediately took action to mitigate its impact by taking our systems offline with the support of external IT security specialists. Since the incident, we have worked around the clock to minimise disruption and resume normal operations in a safe and controlled manner. Despite this challenge, our number one priority has always been to support our employees and to make sure that we are able to get pay to you. We therefore set up a process to make payments in lieu of a normal payroll, which we called an advance payment. Without the benefit of our systems and time sheets the advanced payment was based upon a proportion of Parasol’s invoice value. We were able to set up this process within four hours of our system outage and started making payments on the same day. We appreciate though that due to high volumes and our lack of system support, there will be individuals who may be owed pay. Our teams have been working continuously and I’m pleased to advise you that we are now in a strong position to start transitioning towards a more normal approach. Today, we began to make payments calculated in line with normal payroll and with effect from Thursday 20th January 2022 we are pleased to announce that we will begin to deliver normal payroll runs, which will provide payment inclusive of normal deductions. We do however remain unable to apply personal pension contributions and expenses until further notice. We anticipate that any adjustment that needs to be made in relation to advanced payments will be made during the next week. As we restore our systems our phone lines will be closed temporarily. Our teams however will be fully focused on making payments. If you need to contact us urgently, remember that you can connect with us via LiveChat by visiting https://parasolgroup.co.uk/portal-maintenance between the hours of 8am and 7pm. You can also email us as normal at [email protected]. We will respond to you as quickly as possible. In terms of next steps, you will receive a further communication from us tomorrow setting out key information in respect of our systems and any relevant processes. Apologies once again for the inconvenience this has caused you and please be reassured that we are doing everything possible to restore services fully. Your ongoing patience and cooperation would be greatly appreciated. Our priority remains to do the best we can to support you. Kind regards Doug Crawford, CEO Parasol

[pacontracting]

Still no sign of any money. Speaking to others, they are in the same boat. Some people (notably those working through Hayes) appear to have had something - but then Hayes bills weekly when a lot of other agencies bill monthly.

[eek]

Still no sign of any money. Speaking to others, they are in the same boat. Some people (notably those working through Hayes) appear to have had something - but then Hayes bills weekly when a lot of other agencies bill monthly.

Hays also use a third party system that may provide Parasol with an easy means of validating timesheets.

[I am tired TIRED]

MyParasol back up but slower than a one legged tortoise!

[pacontracting]

Could have thrown a few more cores and a bit more RAM to it. I'm betting the front end isn't horizontally scalable hence the treacle like performance.

At least my invoices are still there but not been paid yet. Hopefully very soon.

[css_jay99]

What a nightmare. 3 weeks of no payment. Though they did pay something into my account 2 days ago but certainly does not reflect any invoiced amount.

I tried to log in on their portal today and got a hanging screen going nowhere only to get a message on my phone that my password has been updated and that I should contact them if I did not update it. Called the phone which ends up telling me to go to Live chat that keeps asking me to put in my full details and email address.

I wonder if the system is still hacked.

Another reason to hate IR35

[northernladuk]

What a nightmare. 3 weeks of no payment. Though they did pay something into my account 2 days ago but certainly does not reflect any invoiced amount.

I tried to log in on their portal today and got a hanging screen going nowhere only to get a message on my phone that my password has been updated and that I should contact them if I did not update it. Called the phone which ends up telling me to go to Live chat that keeps asking me to put in my full details and email address.

I wonder if the system is still hacked.

I wouldn't expect comments like that on an IT board. More like something I'd see on Mumsnet.

[pacontracting]

What a nightmare. 3 weeks of no payment. Though they did pay something into my account 2 days ago but certainly does not reflect any invoiced amount.

I tried to log in on their portal today and got a hanging screen going nowhere only to get a message on my phone that my password has been updated and that I should contact them if I did not update it. Called the phone which ends up telling me to go to Live chat that keeps asking me to put in my full details and email address.

I wonder if the system is still hacked.

Another reason to hate IR35

More likely what you are seeing is a static website that they managed to restore from a backup (version on the front page seems to show 8th Dec 2021 at 5pm 21.12.08.1700). Note the 'Christmas message' on the front page. I doubt it's connected to anything yet - certainly not showing that one of my invoices has been paid (but I am still waiting for me to be paid), implying this is either done manually (and hasn't been done), or the system isn't connected to anything (hopefully it will be soon).

[eek]

More likely what you are seeing is a static website that they managed to restore from a backup. Note the 'Christmas message' on the front page. I doubt it's connected to anything yet - certainly not showing that one of my invoices has been paid, implying this is either done manually (and hasn't been done), or the system isn't connected to anything (hopefully it will be soon).

I suspect Invoice to payment Reconciliation is a manual task as few agencies add appropriate references to their transactions - so you need to check the appropriate (paper / pdf) remittance document to match the invoice to the payment.

And for some self-billing agencies literally the only thing you have to work from is that remittance document.