LESSON LEARNT

A big lesson learnt – Always have it in writing

The relationship with our manufacturers:

Our group is lucky to have manufacturers who we have a very informal, flexible and honest relationship with. This can sometimes cause problems such as the one we have recently encountered with our invoice slips. We have made a lot of decisions in their offices face to face and we make decisions on the phone though phone calls and whatspp messages and even voice notes. This just shows the informality of our relationship and how we easy they are to communicate with and contact. This informality does however present its problems.

Our invoice slip

Checking our invoice slips are vital as mistakes have been made in the past and errors are easily made. We did have a few questions with how some of the costings were calculated on the invoice slip. We had agreed on costing before we started manufacturing but however some calculations in the invoice that we received with an outstanding balance didn’t make sense. They had originally made a mistake by over charging for the lining by R5 per a unit on the bags 30 that were made. After this was corrected they sent us a new invoice but had included an extra amount for the ties that go around the jackets. This amounted to R5 x 50 jackets, which all in all increased the outstanding in the original invoice. What was confusing is that we though these belts for the raincoat were included in the manufacturing costs from what they quoted us on.

The lessons learnt:

From now on we have learnt a very important lesson for some it may seem obvious but people can very easily fall custom to this trap. We have learnt to always have quotes put in writing before agreeing to the job. Although it wasn’t too much money it always adds up. This could be a blessing in disguise as we will be sure to never fall into this trap ever again. Even though it wasn’t about the money as it wasn’t too much money we still feel very strongly about the principle. We do however think we have been lucky with the relationship that we have with our manufactures and for this reason we feel it unnecessary to make a massive scene about it. We see it more as an opportunity cost and a lesson.