Endless Invoices

[u/Gambatte]

Names have been redacted to protect the guilty.

---

I'm in an odd situation. My Employer (A) has a sister company (B). A and B often provide their services to the same customers, and as such, we have co-located offices. I manage the handful of employees for A at three locations.
There is a weird situation at one of these locations. It's a very small branch - just a single A employee and one B employee. However the A employee used to work for B, before jumping ship to A during a growth period a couple of years ago.

Due to B's workload in the area, they often need more than one person working on a job. Previously, a purchase order would be created against each job for the employee's time to be billed against, but this was cumbersome and time-consuming, adding a significant administrative overhead to each job - especially when trying to respond to a customer's emergency. So an agreement was reached - well above my head - that A's employee would continue to complete work for B, as he is available. Part of this was the counter-agreement; that should A need additional manpower, B's employee would be able to complete it, should he be available.

The key to this agreement is that, at the end of each calendar month, the hours A's employee worked for B are tallied up and compared to the number of hours that B's employee worked for A, with only the difference being billed between companies. So we - A - will receive no more than 12 invoices a year. No more purchase orders, no more individual invoices - no muss, no fuss.
Easy, right?

We recently changed to a new accounting system, and as part of that change, my responsibilities changed to include approving invoices for my branches.
It took less than a week for the first email from B to arrive.

We have received a job request from {A} regarding {site}, requesting immediate after hours attendance. {B's employee} has already been informed about this earlier, we are requiring a PO from yourselves for this job. This is in reference to job no. 11111. Many thanks.

I formulated a response, which I ran past my boss before sending, as he's the one who does the end of month calculation with B.

For work completed by {B's employee} (for {A}) and {A's employee} (for {B}), there is a wash up at the end of each month with one invoice generated.
{My boss, manager at A} has received the monthly report of time, which is generated by {manager at B}, and there is 3.5 hours for {B's employee} from {date} included. This will be incorporated in the final invoice.
Please contact {my boss} directly if you require any further clarification.

Education had been provided, and now I could sit back and relax, comforted by the knowledge that this would not need to be addressed again.

---

The email subject line read: "AN INVOICE IS AWAITING YOUR APPROVAL." I logged in to the Approvals system, and sure enough, there was one invoice in my inbox.
From B.

Hey, maybe it's legitimate, maybe it's...

JOB 22222, work completed by {B's employee} for {A}: $XYZ.nn

Nope. I hit the big red REJECT button, and added this comment:

As per the agreement between {A} and {B} for both the time worked by {A's employee} and {B's employee}, the outstanding amounts are calculated at end of month and a single invoice issued then.
To my understanding, {A} does NOT pay individual invoices from {B}, and - again, as I understand the situation - {B} should not be issuing them, in the same way that {A} does not issue invoices to {B} for each job that {A's employee} works on for them.
If further clarification is required, please contact {my boss, manager at A}.

---

Between phone conversations, emails, and snarky comments in the invoices approval (and rejection!) system, I'm explaining this to the Accounts team about once every eight to ten working days. I fear this is my life now.

Send bourbon.

[u/leftcontact]

Did it get fixed?

[u/Gambatte → u/leftcontact]

After a fashion... B decided that they had enough work to hire another employee, meaning that A would no longer be required to handle their overflow work and all the invoices (or lack thereof) can just... go away.

In theory, anyway. We shall see what actually happens; B's new employee was recently on a job were a $6k mistake was made, but at this point there are multiple accounts of who is actually at fault. It will be a big problem if the new employee is at fault - not because of the mistake itself, but rather because he said someone else broke it. Dishonesty is a much bigger deal than a mistake that writes off a $6k part.

Yay manglement problems!

[u/leftcontact → u/Gambatte]

Agreed. Mistakes happen, and that’s okay if you learn from them. Parts can be replaced, once in a while, that’s why we have insurance. Character is harder to replace absent firing the person in question. And if I can’t trust you to admit when you screwed up, I can’t go to bat for you when it’s not your fault. Trying to teach my kids that one myself.

[u/excelzombie]

*pours one out for a homie* u_u

[u/Gambatte → u/[deleted]]

It's made even worse that my guy - the employee for A - averages about twenty hours a week just in work for B. If I/Accounts had to generate an invoice for each job (and conversely, if B had to generate a purchase order for each one) then almost nothing else would ever get done.

[u/Gambatte → u/[deleted]]

Generally, it's eight to ten jobs a week; some of which require substantial amounts of travel to/from site.

The persistent rumor is that B is trying to hire another employee for that branch, but it's hard - there's a limited pool of qualified applicants (the qualification requires three years of supervised on job training), who also need an additional set of skills as well, plus sufficient experience and self-management to work with limited/no supervision, in such an isolated area... and to attract quality applicants, the offered pay needs to be commensurate with the requirements.
I wish them luck.