Recession accounting

I'm getting back into routine now, with visits to College in the morning to check on student comings and goings, and then have lunch and chat to people on this week's external course - an introduction to chaplaincy studies. Then I head to town and the CBS office in the afternoon to deal with whatever I can help sort out, and ease the administor's work load. December bank statements needed checking over and data entered in our records. On Monday evening, after a time wasting battle to deal with an obscure MS Outlook error message preventing download of office emails, I ended up taking work home with me, rather than stay any later. It's ages since I've done that, but end of year stuff needs dealing with sooner rather than later. 

Often CBS gets payments with scant information to say what invoices they refer to, and this requires detective work. Many payments are made in arrears following chase up efforts over eighteen months or even longer. We've noticed businesses both small and large are less punctual in paying by an invoice due date. In the case of bigger well resourced companies and those being taken over, changes in their administration take place and either we aren't informed of billing address differences, or they are slow in coming. Sometimes, internal financial scrutiny of outgoing payments leads to months of delay in issuing payment authorisation. Or, a new supposedly more efficient accounting system is introduced and CBS is obliged to re-apply to be regarded as a supplier on the new system, even though the company owes us money. We don't benefit from this but the company in question does. Payment delays improve their cash flow position, whilst weakening ours. If a company goes into administration or closes down, we may have difficulty getting our equipment back from the store or club, let alone getting bills paid. This is what recession means. If we weren't a volunteer run organisation we'd find it hard to continue making progress.

How nice it was to get home tonight early enough to cook supper and walk to my first Chi Gung class of the New Year in good time. Afterwards I booked my Bristol - Malaga flight ready for my spell of locum duty cover for my friend Geoff Johnston in Nerja. I was fortunate to bag one of the last three seats on the return leg on a conveniently timed decently priced flight. I return as summer holiday traffic in both directions gets hectic. Looking forward to returning there.