Incompetent Department

In every company, there will be this department that's incompetent and thus dragging everyone down.

In my current co, it's the stupid accounts department. They are super incompetent, super irresponsible, super late in replying enquiries, and super good at losing invoices..

How bad are they? Well they manage to lose like 20% of the invoice that we send in for processing everytime. This I really don't understand, it's not like we mail the invoices to them, we bring it down to them and leave it in their designated slot, so don't come tell me that it's lost in mail, that's not possible.

We are very sure that the invoices were sent to their department and they are the ones that lost the invoices. It's really very bad organization on their part, how can they keep losing invoices?! It's not a one off thing, it had already happened so many times.

The normal procedure on my side is to get the invoice endorsed and then we'll send it to the accounts for processing. That's the end of the story on our part and we depend on them to pay the vendors on time.

But I realise we cannot depend on them, I have so many invoices on hand that's not paid up yet, invoices dating back to November. And worst, my colleague had a claim that's not yet reimbursed since last May!! This is atrocious! What the fuck are they doing?

It's not that bad if they lose the invoice and let us know, the problem is, we will have to wait for our vendor to ask us why the payment had not been made yet, then we'll send an email to the accounts side to ask about the status of the invoice. After that, we can only wait, there's no one we can call and no one we can ask.

The average time they take to even take a look at the mail is 1 month, and it takes about 2 months before they reply. Most times when they reply, they will say that they cannot locate the invoice. What the fuck!? They take bloody two months to let us know that the invoice is lost?

And the best thing, they will always reply in a way to imply that we are the ones who did not submit the invoice, and it's not them who lost it. See why I hate them?

I have so many payments stuck and vendors keep calling me, asking for their payment but there's nothing much I can do if the accounts department continues to work this way.

Back in early Jan, I have several invoices that's pending payment and as the accounts department blatantly refused to acknowledge our enquiry mails, my colleague and I went down to meet this lady who's in charge of the enquiries. She promised to get back to us.. but guess what, we have to go down repeatedly and each time she gave us excuses and empty promises.

In the end, we had to resort to a very high-handed way to get the payment. I sent an email to all their heads, copy all our heads, send it to the finance department (they are different from the accounts department I'm talking about) and then we get a response and then my vendor gets their payment.

The email I sent was nasty, I was pissed and I realise being nice and understanding will not work anymore. It was a long nasty email, but I did not accuse anyone, I just wrote down the facts and let the heads decide. The response I got soon after was swift, so I think they got what I was trying to say. Now I just hope the email I wrote will affect that enquiries' lady's apprasial, she deserves it.

It's really irritating.. can't the accounts people just do their job properly? I'm not the only one that's having problems with them, even my colleagues from other departments have problems with them.. .. .. haiz.. we are all just trying to make a living here, why can't they just buck up??