[imagesource: Zistemo]

The bane of pretty much any and every business or freelancer is chasing down outstanding invoices.

Some people have real difficulty with the whole ‘pay within 30 days’ part of the process if they ever bother to pay at all.

Go ahead and ask a South African freelancer about their tales of woe, for example. Most can rattle off the names of very well-known South African companies that are extremely tardy at paying, despite being extremely vocal about deadlines being met along the way.

I suppose they should be happy they aren’t dealing with the Eastern Cape government, which City Press reports is the country’s worst offender for failing to pay suppliers within the 30-day invoice payment provision:

At the end of March, the province had not paid 34 585 supplier invoices amounting to a little over R3 billion, the Public Service Commission (PSC) revealed during a media briefing on Tuesday.

Incredibly, those relate to just the three-month period from the start of the year until March 31.

The figures, released by PSC commissioner Anele Gxoyiya in the most recent quarterly bulletin, show that Gauteng, North West, KwaZulu-Natal, and Northern Cape round off the five worst provinces for unpaid invoices.

No surprises for who comes out on top:

It was only the Western Cape that had no outstanding invoices by end of March. In February it had two outstanding invoices amounting to R27 727 which had not been paid within 30 days.

As further proof of having earned the nickname Mr Fix Fokol, Fikile Mbalula’s transport department didn’t even submit monthly reports for January and February 2022, with Gxoyiya calling it one of the “repeat defaulters for non-adherence to the submission deadline of monthly reports”.

I’m willing to bet any and all invoices submitted by Digital Vibes were paid on time, though.

[source:citypress]