A clock needs room for the facts

Cashflow Council members,

I co-signed because late payment should not be treated as a private inconvenience that each small supplier has to absorb alone. I wanted the Council to measure the practice, set expectations, and make it possible to talk about what happens when a large buyer keeps money past the agreed date. Co-signing was not a promise to approve every proposed remedy. I oppose the 15-Day Pay Standard as written.

Here is the episode I keep returning to. On 9 March, I sent a large purchaser an invoice for CAD$3,840. Our written terms allowed 30 days. On 24 March, its accounts-payable desk asked me to resend an attachment showing completion of the work. I sent it that day. On 1 April, the desk confirmed that the file was complete and the invoice was not being disputed. The payment arrived on 29 April.

That is 28 days after the invoice was confirmed as undisputed. The proposed standard would have required payment within 15. I am not going to pretend that would not have helped me. It would have. I had bills to cover while I waited, and I spent time checking the payment status instead of doing work that brings money in.

But a rule that would have helped me in one case can still be the wrong rule for every case. The facts matter. The purchaser asked for a document; I supplied it. The invoice then sat in a payment process I could not see. My problem was not that 30 days had been written into our agreement. It was that, after the file was complete, I had no reliable way to know when the payment would be released or who could make it move.

What I tried

I checked the contract, resent the attachment, and followed up through the accounts-payable contact. I also kept the emails and payment record together so I could show when the invoice was submitted, when the file was complete, and when the money arrived. Those steps created a record; they did not give me control over the buyer’s processing timetable.

For an ordinary commercial invoice like mine, the written terms were the starting point. I do not want the Council to imply that a single 15-day payment rule already governs every business transaction in Manitoba or across Canada. Rules can depend on the kind of transaction and the law that applies. A standard aimed at large buyers and small suppliers should say plainly what counts as an undisputed invoice, how a genuine question is raised, and when the clock starts again. Otherwise, the people with the most administrative power will decide what the rule means in practice.

Why I oppose this draft

Fifteen days is not a neutral number. Some small suppliers need money much sooner than that; some buyers, including smaller organizations themselves, have payment processes and cash cycles that do not fit it. The draft is directed at large buyers, but the language and cases will travel. A headline standard can become a condition pushed down a supply chain, even where the supplier has little room to negotiate.

I am also uneasy about automatic interest if the draft does not first settle the basics. Which date counts as receipt? What happens when a buyer asks for a missing document in good faith? How quickly must it identify a real dispute, and what prevents a vague query from resetting the clock? If those questions are left open, the smaller party may have a right on paper and another round of unpaid work trying to establish that the right applies.

Publishing payment times has promise, but the figures must be comparable. A buyer should not be able to make its record look better by counting from a later internal approval date, excluding invoices that need

clarification, or reporting an average that hides the suppliers waiting longest. Publish the measure, the exclusions, and the share paid on time. Let suppliers see whether the result reflects the whole process, not just the final step.

What I want the people with power to hear

To the CEOs and officials who may adopt or shape this proposal: do not hear my opposition as a defence of slow payment. I want a buyer to acknowledge an invoice, identify any missing information promptly, state clearly when it is undisputed, and give the supplier a payment date that it keeps. I want late payment to carry consequences that are understandable and usable, not merely written into a policy no supplier can enforce without spending more time and money.

My request is for the Council to revise the draft before adoption. Set a clear, short deadline for raising a genuine query; require a dated confirmation when an invoice is complete and undisputed; and make payment-time reporting transparent enough to compare like with like. Keep a strong expectation of prompt payment, but do not make 15 days an inflexible universal answer before those safeguards are settled.