Think your company’s heard all the excuses for unpaid invoices? Think again.

A survey by the Better Payment Practice Group (BPPG) asked for the most common and bizarre reasons given by companies for paying invoices late. Not many surprises on the top ten most frequent, but here are some of our favorites:

• #2 — “Lost the invoice, need you to send another copy” (22%)
• #4 — “Our A/P person/team is out sick” (15%)
• #5 — “The check’s in the mail” (6%), and
• #6 — “The new computer system is being installed/has failed” (6%).

Odds are good your collections people come across these classic gems more often than they’d like. But the survey’s bizarre reasons are sure to leave even the most jaded A/R person absolutely speechless:

• “Our owner’s been buried with his check book.”
• “A mail truck blew up on the highway last week right after we mailed payment. We’re not saying our payment was on the truck, we’re just saying …”
• “I do not speak English.”
• “We don’t have any money to spare. If it took a quarter to travel around the world, we’d have to stay home.”
• “Not now, it’s the office party!”
• “There was a big lightning storm, and a bolt hit our telephone lines. Then the next bill we got had a bunch of 900 and long-distance numbers on it, and we didn’t make them!”
• “We’re in the middle of an armed robbery.”

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Tags: Collections, Debtors, Excuses, Top Ten