A group that pays late on purpose
You won a contract with a chain of twenty cafés. Each site has its own bins and frequency. The group's head office wants one monthly invoice, with each site's charges shown separately, each site's cost centre code, and their purchase order number on every invoice. Their accounts payable team will reject any invoice that does not match.
Your billing system produces one invoice per customer account. To meet the group's requirements, your accounts assistant exports twenty invoices, pastes them into a spreadsheet, adds cost centre codes from an email she keeps, and types the PO number. When a site closes or opens, or the PO changes, the spreadsheet breaks. Invoices are rejected and payment slips a month.
Why groups do not fit your billing
Most waste billing is built around one account, one site, one invoice. Groups need a hierarchy.
- Group, region and site levels are not modelled in your billing system.
- Cost centre codes and site references belong to the customer's system, not yours.
- Purchase orders expire or run out of value, and new ones must be applied.
- Sites open, close and change services during the contract.
- Each group's accounts payable team wants a different format.
What mismatched invoices cost
Rejected invoices delay payment on some of your largest accounts. Each rejection means rework and a new submission, and often a month's wait for the next payment run.
The monthly spreadsheet exercise costs office time, and its errors can bill a closed site or miss a new one. Groups that find invoicing hard to process remember it when the contract comes up for tender.
How we structure group billing
What we build adds a group layer to your billing without replacing it.
- Each group is modelled with its sites, regions if needed, and the customer's own references: cost centre codes, site numbers and their accounts contact.
- Your billing system continues to charge each site's services, and we collect those charges each month.
- Purchase orders are recorded with their value, dates and the sites they cover. Invoices draw on the current PO, and you are warned before a PO expires or runs out.
- Group invoices are produced with a summary and site-level detail, in the format the group requires: PDF, spreadsheet, or a file for their procurement system.
- Site openings, closures and changes are checked against the group structure before each run, so a new site is never left off and a closed site is never billed.
- Rejections, if they still happen, are logged with the reason, so the same problem is fixed at the source.
| Group requirement | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| One invoice, site detail | Group invoice built from site charges |
| Cost centre per site | Stored against each site |
| PO number on every invoice | Current PO applied, expiry warned |
| Their file format | Export built to their specification |
| Site changes mid-contract | Checked before each run |
Month end with group billing
The billing run finishes and the café group's invoice is produced automatically: one summary, twenty-one site lines this month because a new site opened, each with its cost centre and the current PO number. A warning shows that the PO will run out in two months, so the account manager asks the group for a new one now.
The group's accounts team uploads the spreadsheet into their system without edits. The invoice is paid in their next payment run.
Do group accounts need a spreadsheet every month?
- Group invoices are assembled by hand from individual site invoices.
- Cost centre codes are kept in emails or notes.
- Invoices are rejected for missing or expired PO numbers.
- New sites have been left off or closed sites billed.
- Each group wants a different invoice format.