I just heard a story from a client of mine, an auto parts and marine products retailer, that left me shaking my head.
They received a bill from UPS (the shipping company) for $268 trying to recover funds from the year 2000. That was five years ago! UPS says that back then they applied to Customs for a refund on overpayment of international charges. Customs sent the refund check to my client instead of UPS. UPS says…after 5 years…they want their money back.
The Office Manager at my client is furious. She doesn’t have the time to research something that far back. Nor does she have the time to sit on the phone to understand all of this from UPS (I guess the bill was not very detailed). UPS is demanding their money under normal terms. She is telling them she will research it when she has time and it make take months to find the time. They took five years to bill her, so she feels justified not making this her highest priority. They didn’t think she was funny.
Who do you think is going to lose? If she doesn’t clear this up, who’s credit record will be blemished?
This entire incident made me look at how a small business vs. a large business runs. In a small business, we think about the person or company on the other side. After a few years (or less), we might write this off. We would look stupid to our clients coming to them five years later for such a small amount. This says…your processes are not in order. Our clients might lose confidence in us. Let alone, the time to research and collect the money is more than the money itself. One can only assume (and hope) that UPS found thousands of dollars to collect from their customers to make this effort worthwhile. Or, their accounting department is being pretty anal.
Are your accounting processes in order so you aren’t waiting five years on something??
PS…the client should be able to go into their archived QuickBooks file and find the $268 deposit. Let’s hope there is some note about it. I am a big believer in adding notes in the ‘memo’ section when something is out of the ordinary. I’ll let you know the outcome.
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