Inside the wait
What happens to an invoice between arrival and payment, and which of those days anybody owns.
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Day Nought, and What Starts Then
The clock does not start when you send the invoice. It starts when a document their system accepts as valid arrives — and the gap between those is yours to close.
Matching, and the Transposed Digit
Three documents have to agree before anybody looks at your invoice. When they do not, nothing happens and nobody is told.
Three Signatures You Cannot See
Once matched, an invoice waits for people to approve it. The chain is invisible, has no deadline, and is where most of the delay lives.
The Fixed Date You Missed by One Day
Money leaves a large organisation on fixed dates. An invoice approved the day after one waits for the next, which is usually a month.
Whose Clock Each Day Belongs To
Split the wait by who owned each day and most of it turns out to be unreachable. The useful part is the fraction that was shared.
What Silence Means
No news from a buyer is not neutral. Five things silence can mean, only one of which is that everything is proceeding normally.
We Never Received It
The most common answer to a first chase, usually true, and answerable only with a record you made at the time.
What the Wait Costs You
The wait has a price in interest, in work not taken, and in attention. Only the first is usually counted, and it is the smallest.