Wednesday 10th December

I work in Accounts – I know, it’s boring – but then most jobs are.  I make the best of it though and try to do the best I can, but of course even I make mistakes.  I have taught myself to always check my own work first before e-mailing or phoning other companies up, quite often this saves embarrassment and it is far better to discover your own mistakes than to be tripped up by someone else.

I am currently working three days a week, Monday to Wednesday and leave clear instructions to the office girl that any queries I will deal with next week, or in an emergency to text me.  Last Friday when I was not at work a supplier rung the Managing Director about an outstanding invoice from August which they claimed was unpaid.  The complication was that this was for a personal delivery of wine to the MD herself and she was annoyed that this had not been paid.  When I came in on Monday she had a row with me because she had told me about this smallish invoice back in August.  I checked on my spreadsheet and saw that we had had no statement for a few months from this little used supplier and there were no old unpaid invoices on our system.  I assumed I had mislaid the invoice in question and apologized.  The old maxim of “kick someone when they are down” kicked in and the MD carried on saying how she had never been so embarrassed in her life etc: etc:  She had immediately written a cheque on Friday and sent it to the wine supplier.

Later that day I was entering the cheque and a copy she had had e-mailed to her onto the Accounts system when I spotted that the original invoice had actually been posted and paid.  How come they were insisting it was unpaid?  I dug out the last statement from them and they had an unallocated payment of the amount of the invoice but no invoice shown.  I rung them and the answer was that because the order had been for the MD herself they had created another account for that and the invoice was showing unpaid there, but with a corresponding credit on the main company account.  I told you Accounts were boring, didn’t I.  I explained their error and they will return the cheque (paid by my MD) as soon as possible.

Of course when I tried to explain this to my MD, and point out that in fact it was the supplier’s error not ours, she wasn’t interested.  “Oh, well how was I to know?” she said.  No sorry.  No apology for the row she had given me, and you can bet that when she next speaks to that supplier she won’t mention it, it will all be chummy-chummy and even if they say that another invoice remains unpaid she will send them another cheque, never questioning that it might be their mistake.   Which of course I should have done before taking the blame myself.