Just Call Me Herlocke

So, one of the funnest* parts of fiscal year end is the craziness of trying to get all of our invoices tracked down and paid. The way it works (generally) for us is that I will receive an invoice, make sure it's correct, and then send it to our awesome finance person for payment. Then SHE sends it to the departmental finance people, and THEY actually issue the cheque.

Mostly, this works just fine. It's maybe a little slow, but hey - such is the reality of working for a large organization. That being said, there are things I could do to make the process smoother, and I'm working on it.

So when a vendor called me this week to say "HEY! Your invoice is way overdue, and we're turning off your access," I thought to myself "Self, you thought this was resolved back in December, but clearly something went wrong - okay. Tell them you're sorry and will get the invoice paid ASAP." So that's basically what I did, feeling kinda bad about dropping the ball (I did get them to extend our access for another week. Huzzah!).

And then my finance person said she thinks the invoice was paid back in December. I smelled vindication on the winds of change... and promptly fired off some emails to try to help figure out what in the heck is going on with this payment. Because I would love for this not to be my fault... I don't need to assign blame, but I would like to not be on the receiving end of it.

Anyways, I'm finding that with fiscal year end comes a lot of this kind of sleuthing. Forensic invoice paying? I dunno. But I feel like I need a special detective hat. Also perhaps a bubble pipe.

And a magnifying glass! How could I have forgotten?

*Sarcasm, people.