'Oops, we missed paying your salary, but you will get it next month.''

How would you like to be told this? I am not on a salary so please.....

 Just pay the invoice!

Please send your
---  Date of birth,
---  National insurance number
---  Tax reference number
---   Tax district reference
---  Your address
---  Your Bank details
---  Your annual turnover
---  Proof of your self employed status

---   What your granny had for breakfast this morning!

Okay so the last one is perhaps a bit tongue in cheek but these and other questions are often asked of freelance writers when they have presented a business invoice for payment to councils or universities.

(NB  Please excuse the visual interruptions of the odd dragon or cups of tea or stray dogs, I am a writer of fiction and this is not fiction but hard annoying fact, so it makes me feel the need to lighten the mood, now and then!!)

I would like to know whether the finance departments of councils and universities across the UK actually do need all this information or have just got themselves mired into a routine they are reluctant or cannot be bothered to change.

There are various reasons why it makes me so annoyed.
One is that as a freelance I am not being paid for the time wasted on unnecessary admin, unlike the salaried employees of these organisations. 

It takes time out of my writing day from work that pays my bills, and despite what people think writers do not lounge about all day sipping tea, or prosecco, and going to book launches! 

In these times of Identity fraud, why would I want to send all this personal information to someone I do not know who will no doubt pass it around various departments before it reaches the person who finally presses the button to make a payment?   I will have already sent in an invoice with details that are relevant to make the payment.  

If I was a company that ran under anything other than my own name, would they still feel the need to ask for this information?  

 I can't imagine anyone asking the local garage or electrician for their date of birth or annual turnover before they paid their invoice.  It is a nonsense and an invasion of privacy.

I can appreciate the necessity, if someone is going on their payroll for a long contract etc, but not for individual events, talks or workshops.  An invoice should be adequate.

I am self employed  I pay my taxes to the HRMC as requested and I will, if pushed, provide the organisation with my tax reference number, if they absolutely need it, and from that the HRMC can find out if I am legitimately self employed so I cannot see why need any other reference aside from my name.

Some will attempt to take tax off an invoice even when it says clearly that you are self employed and they must not do this.  

One writer I know was offered more quite a bit more money than the invoice requested, just so that they could take off the tax and pay the writer extra for the time it took for admin to process the resulting problem.  

Aside from that involving more complications - would you, as someone who pays council tax, want the council to be paying someone more than their agreed fee just because the council did not want to process the invoice properly?  I personally find that completely unacceptable.    

 Just pay the invoice!

To add insult to injury I recently had communications with an organisation demanding that I fill in their unnecessary form before they paid me for work I had completed.  After wasting a lot of my time on emails and phone calls they told me it was running close to time for their payment run and if I wanted my invoice paid now I would need to fill in the form.  

They had been passing my invoice back and forward between departments for three weeks.  I finally, under protest, agreed and filled in the form only to find out that they still missed the payment run because in all the fuss the original office had not 'passed it for payment'!

There is no excuse for this.  I was driven to enquire how the person or persons dealing with this would feel if their salary was not paid that month and they were told 'oops sorry we missed paying your salary, but you will get it next time!'

 As writers we like to eat, I like to make sure I pay my plumber, electrician, etc when they give me a bill. But I don't want one day of paid work to cost me two days extra admin....

I know I am not alone. A recent conversation on facebook showed it happens a lot, and all over the country. It is time something was done about it. In the same way the government stepped in a while back to try and stop large organisations putting small companies out of business because they took so long to pay their invoices, we need this sorted!

 Just pay the invoice!

Have you had problems with this kind of thing?  I would be interested to hear them so please share them either in the comments or contact me through my website www.lindastrachan.com (please do keep any comments general . Do not name and shame here)

....................................

Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook - 

Writing For Children.

Linda is currently Chair of the SOAiS - Society of Authors in Scotland 
(Please note, any views and opinions here are her own.)

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins who also illustrated Linda's retelling of Greyfriars Bobby.

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords