Johannesburg
Johannesburg invoice rebuild
When Bidwell Co-ordination in Johannesburg struggled with late payments, Invoice Charm did more than just send reminders.
The client: Bidwell Co-ordination
Bidwell Co-ordination is a six-person admin services firm in Bruma, working mostly with B2B clients from Sandton, Rosebank and as far up as Newcastle. Karen, the founder, runs a tight ship but found herself chasing invoices every single week. Their team handled contract onboarding, VAT201 reminders, and payroll runs for property owners and small manufacturers. But 40 percent of their invoices went unpaid past 30 days, and month-end cash flow was always stressful. They were sitting on R160,000 in overdue accounts in March. Internal admin chewed up four hours per week, mostly trying to get clients to pay the right bank details, never mind getting them to pay on time.
The invoicing situation before
Invoices were Word docs attached to emails, no consistent numbering or reference wording. Clients missed EFT details. Some paid into the wrong account (that caused a major headache with a Durban builder who mixed up a reference). Recons dragged out past the 7th of each month. Bidwell couldn’t track late payments easily, because reminders were sent on WhatsApp or by phone when Karen remembered, not with any set rhythm. One client sat with an unpaid R27,000 invoice for two months because the PO number was left off. Twice, load-shedding wiped draft invoices and forced rework.
How we rebuilt their invoice process
We scoped, cleaned up and rewrote their entire approach over two weeks, using the Invoice Charm kit and weekly ops cadences. Karen and her team handled core admin while we guided the changes with clear, practical scripts tailored to their business mix. Here’s how the work happened:
- Day 1: Ran a full audit of 34 overdue invoices, checked references and flagged missing details (one had no VAT number, another had a wrong due date).
- Day 3: Installed Invoice Charm scripts and templates in Google Docs, matching their three biggest client types and including SARS-compliant info and their new bank FICA letter.
- Day 4: Trained the admin pair, Tebogo and Mpho, on a five-step month-end ritual for sending and tracking invoices, with exact timing to suit their Sandton and Rosebank clients (most paid on the 25th).
- Day 6: Set up a recurring Monday check-in using a shared ops ritual for overdue invoices. Added new reminders, spaced two business days apart, written in plain English.
- Day 9: Sent all revised June invoices using the new format. Put all past-due follow-ups into the cadence, using the Invoice Charm wording.
- Day 12: Built a simple cash calendar based on their income and big outgoing SARS dates using Cash Spell, so Karen could see when VAT201 and EMP201 payments might clash with debtor collections.
- Day 14: Showed Karen and Tebogo how to keep a Supplier Notes file using Supplier Notes to resolve client queries quickly, especially important for a new Newcastle client who always asked about line items.
Measurable outcomes after eight weeks
After two months, Bidwell’s overdue invoices dropped from R160,000 to just R24,000. 87 percent of clients paid within two weeks of receiving the new invoice templates. For the first time, all 25th-of-the-month pay-ins from their Sandton and Rosebank clients landed correctly, no more mix-ups with bank details. Staff time spent on chasing payments fell to 50 minutes per week (almost three hours saved per week). Karen even told us she finally got to take her two-day school holiday up in Mpumalanga, first time in three years.
They didn’t have to ask for help with fixing invoice mistakes again. The new scripts and monthly ops rhythm cut down on those "oops I forgot the reference" moments.
Three months on: what stuck
Bidwell Co-ordination has kept using the Invoice Charm scripts and the Monday morning reminder ritual. Monthly cash flow charts from their Cash Spell setup guide their SARS and supplier pay runs, and every client gets the same clear invoice wording each month. New staff get trained on the same ritual in their first week. Karen says its not 100% perfect (you can’t win every overdue battle!) but her stress is way down, and they’re thinking of rolling out the method for retainer clients in the new financial year.
The next step for Karen’s team is looking at a digital export process for their Eastern Cape clients, more on that coming soon on our projects page.
