What The Daily Payment Con Tells You About Good Accounts

good accounts make good friends

So said to me once by an accountant with a wealth of experience.

It doesn’t literally mean you’ll be bosom buddies. More that when people both provide their goods and pay for them in a timely manner, everyone works much better and happily towards mutual success.

Google tells me that this comes from a French proverb (les bons comptes font les bons amis). Which has an opposite too; bad debts make bad friends. Also with two similar English cousins, ‘short reckonings make long friends’ and ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’.

So I was saddened to learn of a sorry scam involving people paid per day.

When remunerating for say January, the boss would say;

…so you started on the 1st, so we have 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th, that’s four weeks, then the 30th and 31st so that’s two more days…

The money then given being 4 weeks and 2 days.

Yet they’ve scammed the worker out of a day’s pay.

Because the date of the 29th is actually part of the final week, not the fourth as stated. The four weeks ended on the 28th. The extra days should then in fact be the 29th, 30th and 31st.

There’s a ton of unscrupulous people conducting this kind of reprehensible behaviour. Online fraudsters in similar vein now abound too. (Here’s a prominent English list from May 2013.)

But I make a general Sales point. If clients are bad payers, I’ve found it is pretty much always better to stop supplying them. No matter how much a wrench this may appear to be, you will invariably benefit from cutting their nonsense out of your life. Focus on business elsewhere and you will profit.

The same also goes for the mirror. When you say you’ll do something, then deliver it. As and when you promised.

The biggest wastes of a salespersons time are frequently listed on selling blogs. Post-sale firefighting is absolutely right up there. Do not get yourself trapped there.