Andy Gambles

This is a surprisingly simple piece of advice - If you want to get paid make it easy to be paid.

Many invoices I receive through the post or via email, especially from small businesses, are missing an important piece of information. How to pay. Some of you may think this is obvious, you write them a cheque and post it. But that involves a lot of steps, not least the cost of an envelope, stamps, time writing the cheque and having to walk to the post box (although I do need the excercise). Finally the bank charge on writing a cheque is obscene (well it is for me anyway!). If I have to pay you fairly often then this becomes a consistent chore.

Make it easy to be paid by adding your BACS details to your invoices or an online credit/debit card payment form. I pay nearly all my invoices by BACS and it takes me about 30 seconds via online banking. Plus no bank charges.

In fact I mention small businesses however one of the worst organisations for making it difficult to pay in my opinion is HMRC. So many different payment departments for VAT, PAYE, NIC, CPT you have to get the right reference number or form. Why is it not possible to have a single simple Direct Debit where HMRC simply debits the funds I owe them on the due date. I guess that would probably be too easy.