Waiting For Pay

This current contract has had one major downside – the agency in question have the worst pay schedule I’ve ever seen.

Of course, there are also quite a lot of other downsides, which is why I’m not going to be extending or renewing the contract anyway. But that pay schedule is definitely a contributory factor to the entire thing.

It’s come through an agency I hadn’t previously dealt with, and while they did say that the job paid monthly (which is fine with me) they carefully didn’t explain quite what they meant. This tells me that they damn well know the pay schedule is insanely broken/dodgy, but can’t be chuffed to do anything about it.

Usually, a monthly contract is paid by dint of the contractor submitting an invoice and getting paid seven days later. All well and good. You have an invoice deadline of (for example) the 23rd of the month, submit by then and get paid for month-end.

Not with this agency. Oh no.

You submit your invoice for the end of the month. They then take three weeks to pay, *and* still send it BACS, so it takes three days to hit your account. So, for example, the invoice for March, submitted by the ‘March’ deadline of 4th April (don’t ask) doesn’t hit a bank account ’til 18th April. (Which is a bank holiday – something the agency only realised when I asked them what they were doing about bank holidays)  For me, because this one has gone through an Umbrella company, I don’t get paid ’til the next working day – the Tuesday after Easter.

My colleague who started on 31st March won’t get paid til the 23rd of May.

In short, that’s shocking. And I can’t wait to get paid (three days before my contract ends).