The $100K invoice that nearly disappeared

How a fast-growing technical services company avoided a six-figure write-off and kept their biggest client.

Imagine this: You're the CFO of a national hard technical services company. You’ve been delivering on a multi-year, multi-site subcontract for a government department.

The principal contractor is a major player. A billion-dollar business. ASX listed. The lot. Not exactly the kind of relationship you want to jeopardise.

You’ve done the work tied to the contract for years. Delivered what was asked. In your mind, the jobs were complete.

Then you realise, the payments didn’t come. And it’s not just one invoice. Small incremental payments that quickly added up to a substantial amount-$250 here, $600 there. Over $100,000 all told.

You’re running a $100M+ operation. In the scheme of things, maybe that number doesn’t wreck your quarter. But still, you did the work. Of course you expect to get paid.

You’re tempted to write it off. The legal costs alone would quickly eat into this. But you didn’t have to.

This is a real-life story of what happened to one of our long-standing General Counsel subscription clients. Read on to find out what happened.

Wading into the paper swamp

This client was part of our General Counsel subscription, meaning we didn’t need onboarding and were already up to speed:

• We’d reviewed the contract when it was first signed.

• We knew how their teams operated, and where processes often broke down.

• We knew how to get results without wrecking the client relationship.

This wasn’t your average contract. It was a knot of procedures, approvals and timing rules which had to be followed precisely to trigger payment.

Dozens of stakeholders across departments had to do the right thing at the right time just to get an invoice over the line.

It was one of those contracts that was a minefield to work out what you actually needed to do, let alone put into practice.

But because we knew the client’s internal workings, it was feasible. So, we rolled up our sleeves and:

• Obtained and analysed records from hundreds of completed jobs.

• Reconstructed a payment trail across years of complex service delivery.

• Walked the client through step-by-step procedures so future invoices wouldn’t fall through the cracks.

• Reached out to the principal contractor to resolve the dispute without escalation.

Yes, it was tedious. Yes, it was technical. But we knew where to look and how to move.

Had they not been a GC client, this never would’ve made financial sense.

The quiet win that paid off

This took a year to resolve. But because of the subscription model, the client had to do very little.

We were able to jump in and take over.

The invoices were paid, the contract stayed intact, and the client continued to work with the principal contractor.

To us that’s the biggest win of all – the relationship stayed intact.

Six figures recovered. No burned bridges. A major contract still in place.

What would have happened without the GC Subscription?

Scenario 1.  The invoices would have likely been written off.

Scenario 2.  The client would have paid more in fees than they recovered.

Scenario 3. They would have lost a major commercial relationship in the legal process.

Instead, they made one call. And we handled the rest.

When clients work with us under the GC subscription, we quickly get to understand their business and problem solve in a way which simply isn’t possible with one-off briefs.

Want to know what that kind of support feels like?

Try our General Counsel subscription for 3 months and see the difference for yourself.

Take it for a test drive here.