What the guy from oil and gas did was a bit crude

>>What the guy from oil and gas did was a bit crude

And such a refined guy too.

It was a cracking plan, though, albeit a fraction of what was needed.

Too much hot air in the mix.

Maybe they needed to rig their financials

Obviously no flare for business

That guy was a fracking idiot.

After the small software house and Apricot* dealer I worked for had gone out of business and been taken over I had an early issue with the new finance director** who'd either failed to understand, or ignored, the fact that service contract payments had to be up front. The customer had paid for their contract renewal but she sat on the invoice from Apricot. 4 weeks after the renewal date the customer called us requesting an urgent service call which, of course, Apricot declined to attend as they hadn't been paid. Fortunately it was only a failed keyboard so I was able to package one up and send it overnight to the customer, telling them it would be quicker that way than waiting for an engineer.

The FD was very fortunate, her delay in paying only cost us for a keyboard (still not cheap back then) and overnight shipping. Had it been something more serious we'd have had to pay for an off-contract service call at extortionate prices, more critically it would likely have trashed the reputation of the operation just as it was getting going as our customers tended to know each other.

*It was a long time ago!

**A similar failure to pay a relatively small bill sent the whole business into administration a few years later. The transport company concerned skipped taking us to court and went straight to a winding up order, although that could probably have been defended the bank lost confidence and pulled the plug, The company had been valued at over a million pounds and was taken down by an invoice for just over a thousand.

How does a small bill like that send a whole company into administration? Was their liquidity really that bad?

It's also surprising they couldn't even get the bank to loan them a thousand quid, especially back then.

Horrific mismanagement.

Many small companies survive entirely on bank loans for the first few years. They have to bu/rent premises, fit out [work-]shops, pay staff, taxes etc. All up-front costs before a penny comes in through the door. And as the OP says "could probably have been defended the bank lost confidence and pulled the plug".

If a company owes you 750gbp or more you can apply for a winding up order. You should get an immediate response. The fact of a winding up order (successfully or not) will cause other companies, suppliers to ask questions. They'll put different payment processes in place.

The bit of UK Public Sector I work in has a target to pay x% of suppliers within 3 days of receipt of a valid invoice (I can't remember exactly what x is, but it's >95%).

This target is monitored and people are chased if the any of the few invoices that aren't handled automatically look like they will miss it.

In the past I've dealt with small companies where we are the first Public Sector organisation they have come across, and the look of delight and wonderment on their face as you tell them they'll be paid quickly and reliably is quite something to behold.

Government has its faults, but we do pay our bills.

[posted Anon as a Civil Servant shouldn't have public opinions]

Government has its faults, but we do pay our bills.

Always easier to pay bills when it's not your money:)

If it's a bill it's not your money, it's the creditor's.

That's very nice in theory.

Theory, meet practice.

But it is your money transferring to the creditor.

Hopefully you got what you thought you paid for ...

Somewhat surprisingly, in my country the public administration is notorious for paying its bills extremely late.

Our company was taken over (rather, we sold it....) to a much larger conglomerate. It should have been a good assimilation, we had a good product which could be significantly expanded, apparently, they had the expertise to develop it. Especially on buying power; they obtained big discounts on products we used/incorporated. Unfortunately, their 'Standard Terms' were 60 days for payment and they never paid before 90 days.

They staggered in disbelief to find out that we were buying products with at least the same discount. One of their premises for buying the company was the savings in bought-out products: At least 50%. It turned out that a lot of items we were buying at much better prices, discounts, delivery and support. We used to pay our bills on time..... Along with that came goodwill..... Obviously, we were doing it wrong.

"It should have been a good assimilation"

There's nothing like a new owner to balls up a perfectly functioning company or product ...

Back in the day, two newly merged start-ups needed WWW presence, so they paid me a good deal of money for mine (an early so-called "portal"). Then promptly ruined it, and got bought out themselves. The proud third owner of said portal begged me for help. I fixed it in their image (for founders stock in the new company + cash), and once I was done, they promptly sold it for an astonishing number, considering what it was. We all made bank, and I'm not complaining here ... but naturally the new owners broke my work again. They begged me to fix it, but I refused. Been there, done that ... and was comfortably already pseudo-retired on their dime.

The tightening up of bill payments and requiring large organisations to publish date about bill payments is one of the few good things Westminster has done for small businesses.

Although I have worked with a number of small businesses who sign contracts with government and large businesses and fail to get a purchase order. Alternatively, don’t follow the instructions on the purchase order and send the invoice to their contact instead of Acccounts - Then wonder why their invoice either gets rejected or disappears into a void and doesn’t get paid…

The worst I had was a contract was issued by a local authority, but for various reasons did not get a purchase order assigned. Follow a reorganisation and some overspend, it was found the contract had not be sent to Accounts and so set against the budget and thus the council had no money to pay the invoice…

We had the opposite problem. One of our long-time clients got a new finance director and she was absolutely awful. Incredibly demanding, everything had to be done yesterday, didn't like the colour of her new keyboard so demanded we bring her a different one immediately. That was within the first 2 weeks. She would also critique every part of invoices and defer payment well beyond agreed terms.

We spoke to the company owner (her boss) and simply said that she was the worst person we'd ever had to deal with and if it continues we'll have to stop providing services to the company. Apparently we weren't the only ones to complain and she was gone within the week.

I'm sure there are entire careers that could be built on changing one's name to Randy Grandeur.

Oil man is used to public subsidies to clean up after their mess.

"It goes to show that the same mentality that works in the oilfields does not work on the IT world,"

I suspect that this bloke had moved to a different industry for a reason. Obviously there's good money to be made in the short term by padding bills and delivering substandard kit. But the oil industry tends to be quick geographically concentrated - and so I suspect is a bit of a small pond, in which everyone eventually gets to know everyone else. So there's probably a limited amount to time that you can get away with certain practises before you've got to either leave the industry, or go somewhere else a long way away. Unless you stay in the big companies that can't be avoided, and can camouflage your shenanigans as mistakes and have them hidden amongst the normal transactions.