How many times have you been given a proof of payment but not received the payment?
Sometimes affiliate programs can send payments and they never arrive. I've seen it happen every once in a while. There was the time a program tried to send us euros using a BACS transfer. BACS only handles Pounds Sterling, so the BACS system returned the funds to the payer. But the payer only believed we had not been paid after I requested that a trace be performed on the transaction and the results came back.
Right now I'm in the middle of tracking down another missing payment. In case you have never had this type if issue, I provide a transcript of the exchanges that have taken place up to this point below at the end of this post. The affiliate program representative has been responsive, and hopefully after my last reply back I will get a responsive reply from the finance department as well.
Anyway, besides voting in the poll, be sure to share your thoughts on tracking down problem payments.
Michael
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 10 January
... we paid for this. Confirmation of the transfer in the attachment. Please call your bank, maybe they can help you.
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Originally Posted by Me on 13 January
Thank you for your email. It was handed off to me to investigate since I manage our banking relationship with xxx Bank. I contacted them this morning, and they confirmed that there is no record of their receiving the payment. I was told by their international banking team that the next step was to contact the sender and request that they ask their bank to place a trace on the send request. The expected result is that it will be determined that the funds have not been sent successfully, and that they will have been deposited back into the senders bank account.
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 13 January
Thank you for the information. I will transfer information to the accounting department. They will check whether the money has returned and I will write to you.
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 15 January
At the moment, money hasn't returned to our account. In the attachment is a fresh document from our bank. Therefore, we can't make a new payment now. Could you explain why you couldn't receive the money which was sent to details from your invoice? Sorry, but I didn't understand why it happened.
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Originally Posted by Me on 15 January
That is too bad that the payment was not returned to your account. If it was, then it wouldn’t be necessary to track down what happened. But, since it hasn’t been returned, further research is required.
As I stated before, after consulting with our bank, they confirmed that they have not received the funds. And, since you don’t have the funds either, they have advised me that you need to request that your bank perform a trace to determine the details on what happened to the payment request. Payment requests can fail for a variety of reasons, and in those situations it is necessary to have the sending bank perform a trace request to determine what happened to the funds.
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 16 January
Thank you very much for the explanation. I transferred all the information to the accounting department and we will once again check the payment on your account. I will write to you when I receive an answer.
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 16 January
In the attachment is a document stating that we made the payment. Our accounting department said that money has left us and that further, you should find out from your bank where the money is, not us. Please take this document from us, confirming that we made the payment, and contact your bank.
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Originally Posted by Me on 16 January
The feedback from your accounting department does not make sense, given the way the banking system works. Please let me explain this in more detail.
The document you provided is from your bank documenting that a request was made to the bank to make the international payment as documented in that payment order. Based on that request, your bank will be expected to perform a couple of actions. One action will be debiting your bank account for the amount of the funds to be paid to us. The other action will be to submit a request to an external international payment system such as SWIFT to transfer the funds to our bank account at xxxx bank using the IBAN number provided for that purpose. The fact that the funds were successfully withdrawn from your account does not confirm that the funds were successfully transferred to our Bank. In fact our bank states that they have not received the funds. The document you provided is only proof that you requested that your bank make a payment. It is not proof that such a payment was actually made.
In such a situation it is not possible for our bank to request that the transfer be traced. Such a trace can only be initiated by the sending bank, since only the sending bank knows the information that must be provided to SWIFT to request a trace. I do not know for certain that SWIFT was the method your bank used to perform the transfer, but I do note from the following website page xxxx that your bank is a member of SWIFT international payment system. Only your bank will know how the transfer was performed, and only your bank will know the transaction identifier and date and time stamp associated with the actual funds transfer request that was initiated based on the payment order you have provided.
Of course, what is reasonable is for your bank to ask for us to confirm with our bank that the payment was not received, just as I asked you to check to see of the funds were deposited back into your bank account. However, when neither of us can locate the funds in that fashion, which is the situation at hand, it is the responsibility of the sending organization to go to their bank and request that their bank perform a trace to determine the location of the funds from the perspective of the payment system used (I expect SWIFT was used).
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Originally Posted by Affiliate Program on 20 January
Sorry for the late reply. I transferred your message to our account department and waited for them a response. Unfortunately, they said that you should find the money because we paid you, and we don't have this money in our bank account.
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Originally Posted by Me on 20 January
Please reaffirm to your finance department that, contrary to their assumption, we have definitely not received any payment.
I agree, from the payment request provided, that your organization asked your bank to pay us. However, even though you report that your bank has withdrawn the funds from your account, that does not mean we have been paid. In situations like this is the paying organization’s responsibility to ask their bank to trace the payment request in order so that they can provide the standard documentation trace requests provide regarding the relevant details of the disposition of the payment request.
It is standard accounting practice for traces to be requested when a transaction has not been completed successfully. If your accounting department will not ask your bank to perform such a trace, then I kindly request that I be provided with the contact information for the executive to which the accounting department reports.
