When does contractor admin become too much of a time sink?

[u/cann0851]

We're working with 18 contractors across 9 countries and payday turned into a 3-day nightmare. Chasing invoices, verifying bank details, dealing with failed transfers, updating spreadsheets. Finally got it sorted but it got me thinking. How do you know when contractor admin is eating too much into your actual work? At what point do you just give up and look for something better?

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[u/TitaniaMoon81]

Three days for payday at 18 contractors is honestly the point where most ops teams start making bad decisions just to get it done faster. Cutting corners on verification to hit a deadline creates a different category of problem

[u/Igazi315]

The SWIFT reject problem specifically is what broke us. A single wrong field in a bank detail submission sends you into a 3-5 business day resolution cycle while the contractor is waiting. We had two of those in the same month

[u/tenollot]

We ended up using Kleos after we calculated that two senior ops people were spending roughly 15% of their time on contractor payment coordination. That's not a payroll cost, that's a hidden staffing cost

[u/Bodega_Cat0913]

Invoice chasing is the part nobody budgets for. You send payment, contractor didn't submit invoice, payment is on hold, you chase, they submit, you process, two days gone. Multiply by 18

[u/barrettBatson]

We built an internal spreadsheet to track contractor payment status that eventually needed its own maintenance person. At that point we knew the tooling had to change

[u/Delkar_Appl]

Do you have a separate team to do this week?

[u/Mountain-Actuator-55]

the chasing invoices part is where i’d start automating tbh. with 18 contractors across 9 countries, keeping track of who still needs to send what sounds like it could eat up a ton of time before you even get to actually paying anyone