Radio Sales Café

I have an agency that is the only one among my 20+ agencies asking for demand billing: when the schedule ends she wants her invoices.

Recently she ran a schedule for 10 days that came in at the last minute, we had to do the production (twice) and it lapped over a broadcast month, a calendar month and the end of the client's fiscal year so we had to generate three separate invoice runs. We even match her schedule for their non-profit status. And she's abrasive, too.

It's challenging to our systems because we normally do one run of invoices at the end of the broadcast month and have everyone out by the 10th. Traffic and billing are the same person, and she handles this for all 7 stations in two markets.

My billing manager is starting to take these requests personally. The GM is defending the system and I'm left to placate an abrasive, unreasonable agency when I don't have any control over the system.

• If I raise her rates for being a pain, it won't translate much value to our business manager but it will make the agency mad.
• I've talked to the agency about why they are so demanding and they say their client demands it. I can refuse that client's business but expect to lose the other two accounts this agency reps.
• She's in fact so abrasive that I'm tempted to talk to her boss, which also won't improve relations, I'm sure.
• I think our systems are actually out of date and should not be so fragile that if a client wants to pay us that we can find a way to push another button mid-month.

Is this acceptable behavior for an agency with on-demand and calling us "ridiculous", or should our systems be able to handle this kind of billing flexibility? I can fire a client but can I fire an agency's buyer?

I can push in either direction and will likely be equally (in)effective, but something has to change. Does anyone else do multiple billing runs?

Thanks for your insight and experience in similar matters.

-L.

Speculation on which client makes me nervous I left some detail unobscured. I would be curious to sort out if she buys in Georgia, too. 

It still feels unjust to 'accommodate as much as possible'. We have hundreds of other clients who are great and dont get the accommodation this agency gets. It makes me mad that i think the agency negotiated this timeline with the client and now we stations have to live with their negotiation. They are getting a premium on our hard work without doing anything else of value. 

At this point, I'm just an outsider looking in, but reading the last entry of this week's blog was this link:

http://philbernstein.com/tear-up-his-business-card/

Sounds like this could be a useful exercise for this problem client, if only you could get everyone on board.  Meanwhile, the advice already given: do your best but don't sweat it may be best.  If more pressing and important workloads causes you to miss a deadline for problem client by a day or so, I'd say that falls under the "do your best but don't sweat it" mantra.