הפעלת שעון התשלום של VOB/B

Record the contract, its paragraph 16 VOB/B payment regime and the dates it turns on, so every later step reads the same terms instead of somebody's memory of them.

למה: A payment regime that lives in a PDF nobody opens is a regime that gets applied differently by each person who applies it. Registered once, the deadlines below are computed rather than argued about.

Raise the Abschlagsrechnung against the approved verifiable statement of work, carrying Sicherheitseinbehalt and any deduction the contract provides for, and reference the verifiable statement of work on it. Between businesses in construction the tax is usually accounted for by the customer under the reverse charge, so the invoice carries the note and not a rate.

למה: A demand for a figure nobody approved is one that will be returned, and the clock does not start on a returned document. Matching it to the verifiable statement of work also means the accounts and the valuation tell the same story at year end without anybody reconciling them by hand.

Open a clock over the Abschlagsrechnung starting from the client receiving the verifiable statement, under paragraph 16 VOB/B. Payment falls due 21 days later, and the clock records that date rather than leaving it to be worked out when somebody asks.

למה: The single most expensive mistake in interim payment is starting the count on the wrong event, because every deadline behind it inherits the error and none of them look wrong. Anchoring on the client receiving the verifiable statement once makes the whole chain checkable. The period runs from receipt, not from the day you printed the invoice. Entering the posting date moves every deadline in your own favour and leaves you holding a date you cannot prove on the one occasion it has to be proved.

Read back the dates paragraph 16 VOB/B produces from the client receiving the verifiable statement. The sum payable leads, the due date and the final date for payment sit under it, and the derivation spells out each date against the provision it came from, so every one of them can be quoted rather than asserted.

למה: Deadlines that are typed in are deadlines that are typed in wrong, and a payment regime has more of them than anyone holds in their head. A derivation you can read out loud is what turns a phone call about a late payment into a quotable line. On a VOB/B clock the two notice rows stay empty, because VOB/B sets no payment notice and no pay-less notice, so there is nothing to serve and nothing to chase, only the money and the date it stops being on time.

Come back to the list as the month runs. It says how many clocks the project carries and how many are past their final date, badges the overdue ones and fills the breach register underneath. Open an overdue one and the findings name the sum outstanding, the days it has run past the final date and the rate interest runs at.

למה: Reading a clock is what writes its register, so a quiet register on a project nobody opens is telling you about the reading and not about the payments. Nobody misses a deadline on purpose; they miss it because the day it mattered looked like every other day. The statutory interest is due as of right and starts running the moment the date passes, without having to be claimed separately, so the only thing standing between you and it is a record that says when.

Put the approved figure next to the figure you asked for and carry the difference forward. What is unpaid, and how long it has been unpaid, belongs in the accounts as a number rather than in a conversation.

למה: The gap between applied and certified is the health of the commercial relationship expressed as money, and it is only visible if somebody puts the two numbers side by side every period. Cumulatively it is also the single best predictor of a final account fight.

When the clock has run out, send the Mahnung and start default interest running. The record the steps above produced, dates, approvals and the documents themselves, is the case, and it is assembled already rather than reconstructed under time pressure.

למה: The difference between a claim that is paid and one that is argued about is almost never the merits. It is whether the dates and the documents were kept as the work happened, because reconstructing them afterwards is expensive and looks exactly like inventing them.